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Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom (Bluebird) has once again tipped the scales in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, for an eighth week in total. With 23,897 copies sold through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, the slimming cookbook declined less than 3% in volume week on week, after more than two months on sale.
Its eight-week non-consecutive run put it near level with Pan Mac stablemate Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15, which in 2016 racked up eight consecutive weeks across January and February and a ninth week a month later. However, while Lean in 15 had sold 455,142 copies in its first eight weeks, Pinch of Nom shifted over 650,000 in the same time, and is now nearing the three-quarters of a million mark.
Though Lean in 15, at over 1.3 million copies sold, is the bestselling title in the Health, Dieting & Wholefood Cookery category since records began, it looks inevitable that Pinch…, already in third place, will eventually leapfrog it. Perhaps it could even challenge Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals (Michael Joseph) as the bestselling Food & Drink title of all time.
Ian Rankin’s In a House of Lies (Orion) was the highest new entry, soaring into second place with 19,693 copies sold. It also swiped the Mass Market Fiction number one from Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s The President is Missing (Arrow).
Jack Monroe’s Tin Can Cook (Bluebird) knocked Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) from the Paperback Non-Fiction number one spot, selling 12,371 copies in its first three days on sale. This is by far Monroe’s biggest single-week volume to date. Copies bought for food banks as part of the author’s crowdfunding campaign will be included in Tin Can Cook’s sales, though spread out over a number of weeks.
Victoria Hislop’s Those Who Are Loved (Headline) thundered straight into the Original Fiction number one spot, closely followed by fellow new entry Stuart MacBride’s All That’s Dead (HarperCollins), pushing former top spot holder Peter James’ Dead at First Sight (Pan) into third place.
Jeff Kinney’s Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid (Puffin) held the Children’s number one for a seventh non-consecutive week, while Judith Kerr’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (HarperCollins Children's) returned to the Children’s and YA Fiction top 20. With 3,371 copies sold last week, the 2008 edition jumped 252% in volume week on week, racking up by far the largest single-week volume for the title in the Nielsen BookScan era.
The 2019 British Book of the Year, Sally Rooney's Normal People (Faber), continued to sell strongly, charting in the overall top five for a fourth week running—while the 2018 winner, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), has now officially surpassed one million copies sold in paperback, the first Adult Fiction title to do so since The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) in 2016.
The half-term holidays boosted the print market, with volume up 9% and value up 8.7% week on week. With the year's half-way mark fast approaching, 2019 is so far taking 2018 to the cleaners—volume is up 2.4% and value 4.5% year on year.