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Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water (Black Swan) has dived straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 24,309 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. This is Hawkins’ 16th number one in total, after her thriller debut The Girl on the Train racked up 13 across both editions.
Into the Water is now one of only a very small handful of Adult Fiction titles that have charted in the overall top spot in both hardback and paperback, joining The Girl on the Train, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and Inferno, Lee Child’s Personal (all Transworld), Martina Cole’s Close (Headline) and J K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (Sphere). Only Brown and Hawkins have managed it with more than one title.
Knocking Karin Slaughter’s The Good Daughter (HarperCollins) from both the overall top spot and the Mass Market Fiction number one gives Hawkins her 30th pole in the category chart—just one week fewer than Transworld stablemate Lee Child. Brown holds the most weeks, with 79, and James Patterson and his various co-writers have notched up 60.
Peter James’ Dead If You Don’t (Macmillan) ended the run of new Pan Mac stablemate Kate Mosse’s The Burning Chambers (Mantle) in the Original Fiction top spot. With 12,700 copies sold, Dead If You Don’t racked up the highest single-week volume for an Original Fiction title since Jojo Moyes’ Still Me (Michael Joseph) in the last week of January.
Another hardback Goliath slain was Henry Firth and Ian Theasby’s vegan cookbook BOSH! (HQ), which lost its Hardback Non-Fiction number one after a four-week run. Controversial Canadian professor Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life (Allen Lane), published in January, ascended to the top of the Hardback Non-Fiction chart after 18 weeks in the top 20. It leapt 181% in volume week on week following his tour of the UK—including an appearance on unlikely non-fiction kingmaker Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show, which last year propelled Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (Vintage) into its first Paperback Non-Fiction number one spot. Sapiens spent a 63rd consecutive week in the Top 50 last week.
Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) held its Paperback Non-Fiction pole for a fifth consecutive week, and though it dipped in volume for the first time since its paperback release, it has now maintained weekly sales of over 15,000 copies for four weeks running. Not even the Hairy Bikers’ new The Hairy Dieters Make it Easy (Orion) could topple This is Going to Hurt, despite the duo racking up 26 Paperback Non-Fiction number ones since 2012—the junior doctor memoir outsold it by more than half.
Liz Pichon’s Biscuits, Bands and Very Big Plans (Scholastic) held the Children’s number one for a second week running, with Jacqueline Wilson’s Rose Rivers (Doubleday Children's) the highest new entry in fourth place. The Red Wedding was practically re-enacted in the Pre-School and Picture Book chart, with Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks’ What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday (Macmillan Children's), the chart top-spot-holder for six straight weeks, knifed in the back by activity book Where’s the Unicorn (Michael O'Mara). There did seem to be a noticeable theme in the younger kids’ chart, with Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells’ That’s Not My Unicorn (Usborne) vaulting 14 places and Donaldson andMonks’ Sugarlump and the Unicorn (Macmillan Children's) prancing three places upwards. Tom Fletcher and Greg Abbott’s There’s a Dragon in Your Book (Puffin) was the highest new entry in 2nd place, along with a rare solo appearance from Illustrator of the Year Axel Scheffler, whose board book In the Jungle (Campbell) entered the top 20 in 13th place.
The print market inched upwards on the week before, with 2.7 million books sold for £23.2m, yet couldn't match the same Royal Wedding-less week in 2017, posting a 3.3% drop in value year on year. However, 2018 is still ahead of last year by 1.4% in value, and passed the £500m mark a week earlier than in 2016.