Sales of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s 30-minute Meals (Michael Joseph) fell 22% week-on-week, but its 39,118 sale in the seven days to 19th February is easily strong enough to ensure it spends another week (its 17th in total) at the summit of The Official UK Top 50.
Despite having gone on sale less than five months ago, its total sales to date of 1,416,303 copies puts it fifth on a list of the bestselling non-fiction books since records began in 1998—behind only The Official Highway Code, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, and Jeremy Clarkson’s The World According to Clarkson.
As Marian Keyes’ The Brightest Star in the Sky (Penguin) holds firm in second place, three thrilling new entries join The Official UK Top 50 in places three-through-five. The mass-market edition of Harlan Coben’s 19th novel, Caught (Orion), joins the list in third place thanks to an opening-week sale of 27,627 copies; “Richard & Judy” graduate Kate Atkinson’s fourth Jackson Brodie thriller, Started Early, Took My Dog (Black Swan), débuts in fourth; while Val McDermid’s Trick of the Dark (Sphere) rockets into fifth position with help from W H Smith’s “£2.99 with the Times” link-save promotion. The latter sold 19,436 copies last week—one of the Scottish novelist’s biggest ever weekly sales since Nielsen BookScan records began.
Other new entries a little lower down The Official UK Top 50 include Danielle Trussoni’s historical conspiracy thriller Angelology (Penguin), The Hairy Bikers' Mums Still Know Best (Weidenfeld), a tie-in to the BBC2 series which began earlier this month, and “The X Factor” stars One Direction’s picture-filled memoir, Forever Young (HarperCollins).
The latter sold 5,292 copies in its first week on sale, a fraction of the sales “X Factor” winner Matt Cardle’s My Story (also HarperCollins) scored in its first week on sale (21,892 copies—although this was in Christmas week), but way ahead of the opening-week sales of the memoirs by previous winners Leona Lewis (1,492) and Shayne Ward (978). No word yet on the memoirs of other "X Factor" winners (Joe McElderry, Steve Brookstein, et al) but series six loser Stacey Solomon’s My Story So Far (Michael Joseph) hits shelves in May.
Meanwhile, BBC2’s “Faulks on Fiction” series has had a small effect on book sales, not least for its presenter Sebastian Faulks. Sales of four novels in his backlist, Engleby, Birdsong, A Fool's Alphabet and The Girl at the Lion D'Or, have jumped at least 20% in recent weeks. Sales of books mentioned in the series are up around 60-70% year-on-year. Some, like Tom Jones, are way ahead of the curve (up 1,600%), but as most titles analysed in the series are selling fewer than 1,000 copies a week, they remain some way off cracking The Official UK Top 50.
In total, £27.7m was spent at UK book retail outlets in the seven days to 19th February - down 4.1% week-on-week, and down 2.6% on the same week last year when Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow (Bantam) took pole position with a 29,870 sale.