You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Jojo Moyes' The One Plus One (Penguin) has topped the official UK Top 50 for a second week. The mass-market paperback sold 17,957 copies in the seven days ending 16th August, to retain the top spot. The bestseller has now sold just under 60,000 copies in one month.
Sales were down 24% week on week but comfortably ahead of Jo Nesbo's Police (Vintage), the week's highest new entry at number two. Moyes' chart success denied the thriller writer what would have been his first ever UK Top 50 number one. Despite being published officially on the 14th August, sales of the mass market paperback have registered through Nielsen BookScan since the first week of July. The thriller sold 15,948 last week but it has sold 18,586 copies in paperback over a seven week period so far, adding to the 38,618 copies it has sold in hardback. This is the 10th instalment in the Harry Hole series of books and eighth in the Oslo sequence of crime novels by the Norwegian author. The previous title in the series, Phantom (Vintage) has sold 128,827 copies in paperback since its publication in the first week of January, 2013 when it debuted at number three with 15,905 copies, stalling behind The Hairy Dieters (Weidenfeld) and Jamie's 15 Minute Meals (Michael Joseph) respectively.
A flurry of new fiction titles helped to give the genre a 3% lift week on week in the TCM 5,000 with sales of £4.4m and 778,103 units overall.
Following what some media commentators dubbed "[Haruki] Murakami Mania" last week, the Japanese writer's latest novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Harvill Secker) enters at number two on the Original Fiction chart selling 8,432 copies. The author's previous novel IQ84 which was separated into three 'books' but originally published across two editions sold 77,105 copies combined in hardback.
Overall, there were eight new titles in the Original Fiction Top 20 including a new number one. Philippa Gregory tops the chart with The King's Curse (Simon & Schuster)- the sixth entry in the historical fiction writer's acclaimed Cousins' War series, this time focussing on Margaret Pole, the Plantagenet peeress and Countess of Salisbury. The five previous entries, The White Queen, The Red Queen, The Lady of the Rivers, The Kingmaker's Daughter and The White Princess have also topped the chart. The King's Curse gives Gregory her sixth overall number one and eighth week, to date, in top spot. To date, the series has sold over 1.5m physical copies across editions and been worth over £10m to booksellers.
It has been a busy week in the charts for fiction series and instalments. Robin Hobb debuts at four in Original Fiction with her much anticipated Fool's Assassin (HarperVoyager, 2,731 copies). This is the first part of the fantasy writer's new trilogy sub-titled Fitz and the Fool and marks the start of a third trilogy to feature the royal assassin FitzChivalry Farseer, the principal character in The Farseer trilogy released in the 1990s and continuing in The Tawny Man trilogy in the 2000s. These previous six have registered sales through BookScan of over 600,000 copies (since 1998) with Assassin's Apprentice (the first instalment) the bestseller across editions selling over 137,000 copies.
There were also new entries in Original Fiction for Susan Lewis (Behind Closed Doors, Century) at eight, Paulo Coelho's Adultery at number ten and Ruth Rendell at 17 with The Girl Next Door (both Hutchinson) among others.
In paperbacks new instalments of series continues with Tim Weaver's fifth thriller to feature former journalist turned missing person's investigator David Raker. Fall From Grace (Penguin, 10,279 copies) enters at eight on the mass market Fiction chart.
In Non-Fiction, The Official Highway Code (TSO) relinquishes the top spot on the paperback chart after one week and The Chimp Paradox (Vermilion) climbs eleven places to reclaim the top spot for a third non-consecutive week at the top. The best-selling self-help manual has sold over 199,000 copies since publication back in 2012 and should cross the 200,000 barrier over the next seven days.
In hardback, Vicky Pattison, the outspoken star of Geordie Shore enters at two with her tell-all autobiography, Nothing but the Truth (Sphere, 3,096 copies). Pattison follows in the footsteps of fellow "reality" television stars who have scored hits on the chart this year including Made in Chelsea's Binky Felstead whose Being Binky (Simon & Schuster) has sold 14,591 copies to date, James Argent's Living It Arg (also S&S) 4,508 copies and Joey Essex's Being Reem (Hodder), which topped the chart earlier in the year and has sold 21,291 copies in hardback so far.
Linda Collister scores her fourth hardback number one on the Non-fiction chart. The Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking (BBC) tops the chart in its debut week with 3,731 copies and features recipes from Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and the contestants. Last year's Bake Off hardback, sub-titled Everyday (BBC) topped the chart in the same week in 2013 (week ending 17th August) with sales of 5,141 copies but was published two weeks earlier and took three weeks to reach the summit. Everyday debuted at number four w/e 3rd August 2013 with first week chart sales of 2,147 copies.
Based on TCM 5,000 data for Food & Drink, sales of titles by Collister, Berry, Hollywood and other baking related authors and tomes combined rose week on week by 28% in volume terms and 33% in value. Stripping out the Big Book of Baking, value sales rose a more modest 4% with value sales in excess of £150,000 last week.
Overall, 3.2m books registered through Nielsen BookScan last week for a combined value of £23.3m, up 0.7% week on week and flat on sales for the same week last year.