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The paperback edition of Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) has bounded painlessly into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, after spending seven weeks among the top three. The junior doctor memoir sold 17,491 copies to oust Deliciously Ella: The Plant-Based Cookbook (Yellow Kite) after just one week, and becomes Pan Macmillan’s first number one of 2018, after Joe Wicks’ The Fat-Loss Plan (Bluebird) scored the final top spot of December 2017.
Putting aside film tie-in titles helped by buy-the-DVD-get-the-book-free supermarket deals, the April-released paperback edition of This is Going to Hurt has had among the longest runs between publication and its first number one spot for any title in recent years. Five on Brexit Island (Quercus) spent eight weeks in the chart before hitting the 2016 Christmas number one, while Joe Wicks’s Lean in 15: The Sustain Plan (Bluebird), unseasonally released in early November, had to wait until after Christmas the same year to claim its own top spot. Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday), a mid-January release in hardback, chugged into the chart for 11 weeks before claiming the overall number one in late March 2015. But, in its 20th week since publication, with 19 of them spent atop the Paperback Non-Fiction chart, This is Going to Hurt has waited five months.
Only the original edition of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin) might have it beaten—released in January 2013, it didn’t hit the number one until June 2014.
As This is Going to Hurt’s run in the category top spot was cruelly broken up in June by Anthony McCarten’s Darkest Hour (Viking), its current 12-week consecutive run is the longest since Joe Wicks’ The Shape Plan (Bluebird) in summer 2016, which racked up a 14-week run.
Ken Follett’s A Column of Fire (Pan) leapfrogged Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Harper) to claim the Mass Market Fiction number one—the author’s first. Belinda Bauer’s Man Booker-longlisted Snap (Black Swan) rose to fourth place overall, while fellow nominee Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Faber & Faber) entered the Original Fiction in second place. J R R Tolkein’s The Fall of Gondolin (HarperCollins) pipped it to the chart’s number one spot, with 7,808 copies sold, knocking seven-week number one Why Mummy Swears (HarperCollins) to third.
Jamie Oliver’s Jamie Cooks Italy (Michael Joseph) reclaimed its Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Deliciously Ella, with Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Jonathan Cape) the highest new entry in third place.
David Walliams and Tony Ross also wrestled the kids’ number one back from Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton’s The 104-Storey Treehouse (Macmillan Children's), with The World’s Worst Children 3 (HarperCollins) returning for a lucky 13th week. It was joined at the top by Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man 5: Lord of the Fleas (Scholastic).
The summer of unicorns shows no signs of abating as we head into the autumn—Peppa Pig: Peppa’s Magical Unicorn (Ladybird) cantered into the Pre-School number one.
The print market sold 3.2 million books for £27m—its highest value since early August, but its lowest volume since the start of July. With average selling price rising week-on-week for a fifth week, last week's a.s.p of £8.40 was a hefty 24p up on the same week in 2017. For the year to date, value pushes ahead over 2%, while volume just keeps its head above water by 0.5%.