You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Joe “The Body Coach” Wicks has racked up six weeks as the UK Official Top 50 number one, as Lean in 15 (Bluebird) sold 35,694 copies for £286,235, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. Despite a plethora of major number one bestsellers in 2015, including E L James’ Grey (Arrow), Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman (William Heinemann) and Mog’s Christmas Calamity (HarperCollins Children’s Books), this is the first time any one title has held the top spot for longer than five weeks since autumn 2014, when David Walliams’ Awful Auntie (HCCB) notched up six weeks atop the charts.
Lean in 15 has now sold 402,671 copies and made £3.07m in its six weeks on sale. To put that into context, Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food (Michael Joseph)—which was heralded as the chef’s return to form and became the biggest selling Food & Drink title of 2015—has shifted 406,833 since August. Lean in 15 is now the second bestselling Health, Dieting and Wholefood Cookery title of all time, behind Si King and Dave Myers’ The Hairy Dieters: How to Love Food and Lose Weight (Weidenfeld & Nicholson). It is also now 22nd in the bestselling overall Food & Drink titles since Nielsen records began in 1998, leapfrogging Gillian McKeith’s You Are What You Eat Cookbook (Michael Joseph) and Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Christmas (Chatto & Windus).
Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (BBC Books) rose from sixth place to second, shifting 23,591 copies. This was the closest second since Lean in 15 hit the top spot, though the fact Wicks is ahead by a mammoth 12,000 copies indicates Lean in 15’s phenomenal success. However, Berry did beat Wicks on value: hardback Foolproof Cooking’s higher a.s.p of £13.20 pulled in £311,459— £25,000 more than paperback Lean in 15.
Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins (Black Swan) held the Mass Market Fiction number one for a fourth consecutive week, the author’s longest ever run at the top of that chart. The Costa Book of the Year, Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree (Macmillan Children’s), shifted 9,421 copies to take ninth place and the Children’s number one from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (Puffin). The Lie Tree is the first title not written by either Kinney or David Walliams to take the Children’s top spot in nine weeks.
Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You (Michael Joseph) also hit the Top 50 in its 215th week on sale, selling 5,534 copies. A film adaptation is due to be released in June and a trailer dropped last week, which Buzzfeed promised would “emotionally wreck you”. The title has now shifted 501,501 copies since its publication in 2012.
In total, £26.3m was spent on books last week. This was a slight decline in value week on week, but a 15.2% increase on the same week last year.