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Sales of Dan Brown's Inferno (Bantam Press) rocketed 48% week on week last week, sending the bestselling book of the year back to the top of the official bestseller lists.
The Robert Langdon thriller, which has now sold 467,000 copies in hardback, sold 53,750 copies in the UK last week, and was one of a number of books to receive a huge boost in sales in the run-up to Father's Day.
Titles including The Hairy Bikers' Great Curries (Weidenfeld), Robson Green's Extreme Fishing (Simon & Schuster), Jamie Oliver's 15-minute Meals (Michael Joseph), Phil Tufnell's Tuffers' Alternative Guide to the Ashes (Headline) and Damien Lewis' Zero Six Bravo (Quercus) all saw their sales more than double week on week, while there were significant boosts for Father's Day perennials such as Peppa Pig: My Daddy (Ladybird), Giles Andreae's I Love My Daddy (Orchard), Anthony Browne's My Dad (Transworld) and Keep Calm for Dads (Summersdale).
Helped by Father's Day gifting, book sales soared to a 2013 high. Nielsen BookScan data reveals £25.3m was spent on printed books in the seven days to 15th June period — up 18.3% (£3.9m) on the previous week. Sales of hardback books through BookScan's top 5,000 bestseller list for the week jumped 33%, sparked by a 44% rise within the hardback non-fiction sector.
The Hairy Bikers' Great Curries proved the bestselling hardback non-fiction book overall in the UK last week, scoring sales of 4,599 copies — up 155% week on week. The book returns to the top of the Hardback Non-fiction bestseller list after a 13-week hiatus. Over the past 10 years, just three books have managed to reclaim pole position in the list after vacating it for a longer period of time: Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie and At Home (both 17 weeks) and Purple Ronnie’s Little Thoughts About Mums (51 weeks).
Reluctant traveller Karl Pilkington returns to the top of the Paperback Non-fiction chart for the first time since 2011. His The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (Canongate) sold 13,624 copies in the UK last week and takes ninth position in the Official UK Top 50.
Sylvia Day's third Crossfire novel, Entwined with You (Penguin), remained the bestselling paperback novel in the UK by a comfortable margin. The erotic novel sold 43,586 copies in the seven days to 15th June — some 14,787 copies more than the next bestselling book in the sector, Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave (Orion). The novels take second and third position in the Official UK Top 50, behind Inferno.
New entries into the Official UK Top 50 include Lucy Diamond's Me and Mr Jones (Pan) and Kathleen MacMahon's This is How it Ends (Sphere) while, helped by the third season of its TV adaptation drawing to a close, the 2011-published paperback edition of George R R Martin's A Game of Thrones (HarperVoyager) re-enters in 44th position. Martin was second only to Dan Brown as the most valuable writer to booksellers last week, with sales totalling £271,000 - up 47% week on week.
Philippa Gregory's value to the market also rose last week, helped by the BBC adaptation of her The White Queen (Simon & Schuster) hitting TV screens on Sunday. Her total value to the market jumped 20%, to £70,000, with the TV tie-in edition of The White Queen taking 26th position in this week's Official UK Top 50.
Following his death on 9th June after a public battle with cancer, sales of works by the late Iain Banks increased dramatically. His final novel, The Quarry (Little, Brown), sold 2,460 copies in the UK last week, ahead of its official publication date of 20th June. In total, 10,100 copies of Banks' numerous novels were snapped up in bookshops last week - up a massive 445% on the previous week.