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Book sales have jumped 11.5% week-on-week, or 2% on the same week last year, to £69.1m, bolstered by the Borders "closing down" sales, and continued heavy discounting at other major book retailers.
By volume, however, sales were up 4.5% year on year, to 8.9m. It means that sales on a rolling 12-month comparison have entered positive territory for the first time since October last year. In total, 236m books have been purchased over the past 52 weeks, up 0.2% on the previous 52-week period.
Guinness World Records retains its position at the summit of the Official UK Top 50 thanks to a 65,489 seven-day sale. Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse takes second position overall and the original mass-market edition of Twilight (both Atom) sits in third. The latter has now passed the 1.5 million sales mark. Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol enjoyed a 25% sales boost week-on-week, taking the US author into fourth position with a 40,202 weekly sale, while Delia Smith's Delia's Happy Christmas (Ebury) falls two places to fifth.
In the celebrity memoir battle, Ant & Dec's Ooh! What a Lovely Pair (Michael Joseph) remains the favourite in 2009 but its 36,318 sale is well down on the 73,945 clocked up by Dawn French's Dear Fatty (Century) in the same week last year. In that same week, the memoirs of Paul O'Grady and Julie Walters both sold more than 60,000 copies.
In fiction, 18 months after it was first published in the UK, the late Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has finally made in to the top of the mass-market chart—the first time publisher Quercus has achieved the feat. Thanks to continued strong support and independent retailers and a successful stint in Waterstone's "linksave" promotion, the book sold 38,091 copies during the seven days to 12th December.
In paperback non-fiction, Ben Goldacre's 2008-published quack science expose, Bad Science (HarperPerennial), has also made it to the summit of the charts for the very first time. It sold 15,777 copies at UK book retailers last week, according to BookScan data, triple the amount it sold the previous week thanks to a spot in W H Smith's "£2.99 if you buy the Times" promotion.