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Sales of printed books jumped more than £1m last week, after the value of the market hit a 2013 low the previous week. Official statistics from book sales monitors Nielsen BookScan reveal £21.7m was spent on physical books in the UK in the seven-day period ending 13th April—up 5.3% (£1.1m) on the previous week.
Helped by new releases by the likes of James Patterson, David Baldacci, Simon Toyne and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, sales of hardback novels through BookScan's top 5,000 bestseller list jumped 23% on the previous week while titles including Terry Pratchett's fourth Science of Discworld publication, Judgement Day (Ebury Press), and the latest edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack boosted sales within the hardback non-fiction sector by 20% on the previous week.
Gillian Flynn's [pictured] Gone Girl (Phoenix) proved, once again, the bestselling book in the UK, scoring sales of 20,792 copies last week. It spends a third consecutive week atop the Official UK Top 50, becoming the first mass-market novel to achieve the feat since E L James' Fifty Shades Freed (Arrow) six months ago.
The mass-market edition of Marian Keyes' The Mystery of Mercy Close (Penguin) takes second place in the Top 50. The book enjoyed a first-week sale of 14,954 copies helped by a £2.95 deal at Tesco. Paul Hollywood's Bread (Bloomsbury) climbs two places to third position overall.
In addition to The Mystery of Mercy Close, new entries into the Top 50 this week include: the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (Wisden), Tessa Evelegh's TV tie-in The Great British Sewing Bee (Quadrille) and Patterson's latest Alex Cross thriller, Alex Cross Run (Century). The latter was the bestselling hardback novel in the UK last week, selling 6,287 copies in its first week on bookshop shelves.
Although none earn places in The Bookseller's Top 20 non-fiction bestseller lists this week, sales of books about or by the late Margaret Thatcher increased four-fold week on week and were up more than 1,000% year on year. Five earn places in BookScan's top 5,000 bestseller chart for the week: John Campbell's The Iron Lady (Vintage, sales up 1,890% week on week); Gillian Shephard's The Real Iron Lady (Biteback, up 90%); Thatcher's The Downing Street Years (HarperPress, up 2,045%), Thatcher's The Path to Power (HarperPress, up 4,925%) and the rush-released single-edition volume of her The Autobiography (HarperPress).