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For a fourth consecutive week, the three books in E L James' Fifty Shades trilogy were the three bestselling books in the UK, and sales show no sign of slowing down.
In a week when volume sales of books fell 0.5% week on week (to 3.1m), sales of James’ books jumped 21% — from 112,388 copies in the week ending 12th May, to 135,753 copies last week. Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow) was the overall number one with sales of 62,950 copies.
Helped by £2.99 “book of the week” deals at Tesco, Martina Cole’s The Faithless (Headline) and Cecelia Ahern’s The Time of My Life (Harper) were the next bestselling books of the week, and take spots four and five in The Official UK Top 50.
Lisa Jewell was also the beneficiary of a £2.99 deal. Her The Making of Us (Arrow) went into W H Smith’s popular “£2.99 with the Times” promotion last Thursday, helping the book sell 11,840 copies and climb 26 places in the chart.
The Official UK Top 50 welcomes seven new entries this week, three of which are properties of publisher Simon & Schuster—Paige Toon’s sixth novel, One Perfect Summer, joins in 33rd; “The Only Way is Essex” star Sam Faiers’ Living Life the Essex Way débuts in 43rd, while Carol Rivers’ East End Jubilee, a re-package of her 2005 début, Rose of Ruby Street, joins in 37th place.
The latter was one of 12 Jubilee-themed books to sell more than 500 copies at UK booksellers last week—books which were worth a combined total of £120,000 to booksellers. They included: Alan Titchmarsh’s Elizabeth: Her Life, Our Times (BBC); Robert Hardman’s Our Queen (Arrow); and Debrett’s The Queen: The Diamond Jubilee (Simon & Schuster).
In addition, a number of children’s titles featuring the monarch enjoyed solid sales, with Peppa Pig Meets the Queen (Ladybird) and Nicholas Allan’s 1993-published classic, The Queen’s Knickers (Red Fox), enjoying sales of 7,206 copies combined. They take positions one and two in this week’s Children’s Pre-school bestseller list.
In total, £22.2m was spent at UK booksellers in the seven days to 19th May—down just 0.2% week on week, but down 9.6% on the comparative week last year—a week when the hardback edition of Kate McCann's Madeleine topped the charts with a 63,900 sale.