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Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance (Doubleday) has topped this week’s Official UK Top 50 with the strongest weekly sale from a hardback novel in 17 months, driven by tens of thousands of pre-orders at Waterstone's.
The fourth and final book in Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle sold 76,359 copies in its five days on sale last week, averaging one sale every five-and-a-half seconds. It breaks the 2011 hardback weekly sales record, set by Random House stablemate Kate McCann’s Madeleine (Bantam Press) in May, by 3,800 copies. It is the strongest sales from a hardback novel since Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Atom) sold 137,000 copies in seven days in June last year.
Inheritance outsold the next bestselling book of the week, Guinness World Records 2012 (Guinness), by more than two copies to one, and the next bestselling children’s book, David Walliams’ Gangsta Granny (HarperCollins), by almost five copies to one. In just five days, it has become the third bestselling children's hardback book of the year.
With a 32,337 sale, Guinness World Records 2012 (Guinness) was the second bestselling book of the week, while Stephen King's time-travel thriller, 11.22.63 (Hodder), takes third place in the Official UK Top 50. The latter tops this week's Original Fiction chart with a 16,693 sale, becoming the US novelist's first number one since Duma Key (also Hodder) topped the charts in January 2008. With new books by Simon Scarrow, James Patterson and Cathy Kelly also proving popular, sales of hardback novels climbed 2% week-on-week, according to Nielsen BookScan top 5,000 data.
Due to the fact the 22,082 sales of Kathryn Stockett's The Help (Penguin) were split evenly between its two mass-market editions, David Baldacci is the new number one in mass-market fiction. The Sixth Man (Pan) sold 16,139 copies in its first full week on shelves, scoring the US novelist his first ever UK number one.
However overall sales of novels were down 4% week-on-week, and down 18% on last year, caused by a significant drop in sales of novels in a paperback format. According to BookScan, just five paperback novels enjoyed sales of £50,000-plus last week, compared to 13 in the same week last year.
The non-fiction market, meanwhile, continues to struggle to match the heights of 2010. Despite a 5% jump in sales week-on-week, sales of non-fiction books were down 25% year-on-year last week. Guinness World Records was the only non-fiction book to sell more than 20,000 copies, whereas five managed the feat last year.
Lee Evans’ The Life of Lee (Michael Joseph) remains the bestselling celebrity memoir but it was the only one to sell more than 10,000 copies in the seven days to 12th November. Nine celeb-mems, led by Michael McIntyre’s Life and Laughing (also Michael Joseph) with a sale of 24,500 copies, enjoyed five-figure sales in the comparative week last year.
Due to both the hardback non-fiction funk and e-book migration hitting the paperback fiction sector, total spending on printed books last week was down 11.6% (£4.4m) year-on-year, to £33.5m, despite a 4.5% (£1.5m) week-on-week boost.