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J K Rowling's The Casual Vacancy (Sphere) remains the bestselling book in the UK. Her first novel for adults has secured top spot in the Official UK Top 50 for a second consecutive week.
The £7.99 paperback publication sold 28,166 copies in the UK in the seven days to 3rd August, almost 10,000 copies more than the next bestselling book of the week, John Grisham's The Racketeer (Hodder, 18,590 copies sold).
Helped by a £2.95 promotional deal at Tesco, the mass-market edition of Tess Gerritsen's Last to Die (Bantam Books) débuts as the highest new entry in the Official UK Top 50, in third position. The thriller, the 10th book in her Rizzoli and Isles series, sold 16,268 copies in its first week on sale.
Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling (Little, Brown), penned under her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, falls two places into fourth position, while Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (Phoenix) climbs two places into fifth spot.
Other Official UK Top 50 new entries include: David Baldacci's The Forgotten (Pan), the sequel to Zero Day (107,000 copies sold to date); Sophie Hannah's The Carrier (Hodder), the WHSmith/Times "book of the week", It's Raining Men (Simon & Schuster) by "Come Dine With Me" winner Milly Johnson, and the fifth book in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series, The White Princess (Simon & Schuster).
The latter was second only to The Cuckoo's Calling as the bestselling hardback novel of the week, selling 9,973 copies in its first week on sale—up 31% on the first-week sale of the previous book in the series, The Kingmaker's Daughter. Gregory's book sales are up 72% year on year in 2013 helped by the BBC adaptation of her bestselling series.
Rick Stein’s India (BBC) holds pole position in the Hardback Non-fiction chart for a fifth week—Stein and his publisher Ebury’s longest stint at number one since Far Eastern Odyssey spent five weeks at number one in 2009.
Everyday (BBC), the latest addition to a “Great British Bake Off” canon that has been worth £7m to booksellers, débuts as the highest new entry in the chart. In addition to the official tie-ins, books by show judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry have been worth £10m to booksellers since the first series began in August 2010. Books by series winners Ed Kimber, Jo Wheatley and John Whaite have been worth a combined £700,000.
It first hit shelves more than a year ago, but The Hairy Bikers’ The Hairy Dieters (Weidenfeld) remains a UK bestseller. It spends a 53rd week in the Top 20 Paperback Non-fiction chart—its 49th week in the top 10. Total sales of the book stand at 715,155 copies and counting.
With a sale of 5,826 copies, David Walliams' Gangsta Granny (HarperCollins) remains the bestselling children's book in the UK and tops The Bookseller's children's chart for a 21st consecutive week. Over the past 10 years just one book has spent longer at the summit of the list: Stephenie Meyer's New Moon (Atom).
In total, £24.5m was spent on printed books in the UK last week—up 0.7% on the previous week but down 6.7% on the Fifty Shades-boosted comparative week last year. If E L James' influence is removed from the data, the value of the market last week would have been up 4.6%, or £1.1m, year on year.