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The rise in temperatures across the UK has brought to an end the recent market resilience. Over past five weeks year-on-year spending on books has been in the black, but the latest sales figures from Nielsen BookScan show that last week the market fell 8.2% when compared with the same week in 2008.
In total £25.4m was spent through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market in the week ending 31st May, down 5.4% week-on-week, and down 8.2% year-on-year when £462,000 was spent on the hardback edition of Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care (Penguin 007) alone. Stripping this title out from the data would see spending down 5.4% year-on-year.
The mass-market edition of Faulks' James Bond novel joins the Official UK Top 50 in 14th position this week, with a 12,609 part-week sale, 2,636 copies short of this week's highest new entry, Sheila O'Flanagan's Someone Special (Headline Review), which débuts in 6th place. Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta (Sphere) and Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (Corgi) stay rooted to the top of the charts, despite week-on-week sales declines for both of 28%.
The school holidays helped Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels all climb, with New Moon (Atom) rising three places into third position, thanks to a 18,435 weekly sale, an uplift of 4.6% on its previous week's tally.
A tense battle in hardback fiction developed on the high street last week, with new novels from Sarah Waters, James Patterson and Carlos Ruiz Zafón fighting for pride of place in bookshops' new titles bays. With a sale of 5,542, Patterson's Swimsuit (Century) takes top spot in The Bookseller's Original Fiction chart, ahead of Zafón's long-awaited The Shadow of the Wind prequel, The Angel's Game (Weidenfeld). Waters' The Little Stranger (Virago) had to settle for fourth position, behind Penny Vincenzi's The Best of Times (Headline).