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Just under 3m book sales registered through Nielsen BookScan for the week ending the 31st of May with a combined value of £21.9m, the highest figure for two months (since the week ending 12th April when the market was worth £22.3m). This meant the value of the TCM was up 7% on the previous week and 2.2% up on the same week last year. Overall though, the figures for the five weeks, which incorporate May reveal the print market was down 3.7% to £104,248,563- adrift of last year's figures by £4m.
Within the print TCM 5,000, the decline has primarily come from Fiction with five week sales figures showing a £5.1m drop on the same five weeks last year. Nine of the overall top 10 selling books last year for the period were fiction including the hardback of Dan Brown's Inferno (Bantam) contributing £3.7 m alone. This year, we are down to seven, which includes the paperback of Inferno released by Corgi. It tops the five week chart with sales of 146,323 and tops this week's chart for a fourth consecutive week with 22,475 copies. Stripping out Inferno from both years, the volume for the top 10 selling fiction titles for the last five weeks are down 8.3% year on year.
Minecraft continues to demonstrate its impressive staying power. Sales for both The Official Construction and Combat Handbooks (Egmont) were above 20,000 copies again after both titles dipped below the threshold together three weeks ago. Combined sales were up 17% week on week.
For the fourth week in a row we have a new Original Fiction number one. Jim Butcher's Skin Game (Orbit), part of the author's Dresden Files series tops the chart and is the first fantasy title this year to take the top spot. With 2,948 copies, sales were down 18% on the volume sales of last week's number one, The Bones Beneath (Little, Brown). Mark Billingham's latest Tom Thorne thriller slips to three behind non-mover Andy McNab who remains at two with Fortress (Bantam Press) and a sales rise of 20% on the previous week and selling 2,798 copies. McNab has not had an Original Fiction number one since Recoil (Bantam Press) topped the chart for two weeks back in November 2006.
In the Paperback Fiction chart, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin) climbs to two this week, ahead of the film adaptation being released in cinemas in the UK later in the month. The novel need only sell just over 11,000 copies next week for it to cross the 500,000 threshold in the UK. It also climbs to four in the overall UK top 50.
In the Hardback Non-fiction chart, there were no changes to the top three with The Only Way is Essex former cast member Joey Essex enjoying a second week at the top of the chart with Being Reem (Hodder) selling an additional 5,517 copies this week, up 25% week on week.
In the Non-fiction Paperback chart, Bill Bryson climbs one place to take the top spot, with One Summer: America 1927 (Black Swan, 14,437 copies) his fifth bestseller to do so.
Finally, Cassandra Clare's sixth and final Mortal Instruments instalment, City of Heavenly Fire (Walker) takes first in Children's and Young Adult Fiction. The American author's series of books have proven to be enormously popular with UK readers; the series has sold over 566,000 copies combined and has been worth over £3.5m to booksellers so far.