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Adam Kay has done it—This is Going to Hurt (Picador) is officially the longest-running title in the Weekly E-Book Ranking number one spot. With 20 weeks under its belt, the junior doctor memoir has leapfrogged both Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train (Transworld) and Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), tied on 19 weeks, and broken the record.
Kay's achivement is even more impressive, given that the e-book chart, which has been running since May 2016, is generally dominated by fiction—no other non-fiction title has spent longer than two weeks in the top spot, and only three other non-fiction books have hit the number one at all.
Released just under two years ago, This is Going to Hurt first topped the Weekly E-Book Ranking last August—and seems to have replicated its status as the nation's beach-read of choice for a second summer. Across all print editions, it's shifted a whisker under a million copies in that time, through Nielsen BookScan's TCM.
Francesca Main, associate publisher at Picador and Kay’s editor said: "This Is Going to Hurt has been the most exciting and extraordinary project to work on. It has taken its place in the hearts of people across the world and we are incredibly proud of everything the book and Adam have achieved. For Adam now to add this record-breaking ebook achievement to the long list of his other accolades is the icing on the cake. We at Picador and Pan Macmillan could not be more delighted for him."
Elsewhere in the e-book chart, Toni Morrison made her debut posthumously with Beloved and her debut The Bluest Eye (both Vintage) rocketing into the top 20 the same week the 88-year-old author's death was announced. Beloved hit the Amazon Most Sold: Fiction chart for the same period. Both titles had similar boosts in print. Through the TCM, the 1997 edition of Beloved jumped 1,501% in volume week on week, but The Bluest Eye was her biggest seller, jumping 9,594 places to chart in the top 250. The e-book charts are most likely to reflect the effects of a famous author's death, as the instant-buy nature allows fans to immediately pay tribute. Carrie Fisher, Philip Kerr and Stephen Hawking all entered the top 20 following the announcement of their deaths.
Val McDermid's backlist thundered into the chart, with The Mermaids Singing swishing into sixth place, The Wire in the Blood rushing into eighth and The Last Temptation (all HarperCollins) enticed into 10th. All three titles were briefly priced at 99p the previous week, but the knock-on effect boosted their sales even after they had returned to a price above £1.99 (and therefore making them eligible for the Weekly E-Book Ranking).