Weekly E-Ranking: The Tattooist proves indelible in the top spot
Heather Morris' debut The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) has racked up a seventh non-consecutive week in the Weekly E-Ranking number one spot. What a year this title has had—released in January, the hardback's sales bobbed along consistently throughout the spring and summer, growing to 98,334 copies (plus a further 47,982 units for the trade paperback) and finally swiping the Original Fiction number one in July. Meanwhile, the e-book went toe-to-toe with 2018's blockbuster Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), scoring second place to the Nibbies Book of the Year a record 10 times. However, its paperback release on Super Thursday saw it graduate from plucky upstart to runaway bestseller, with over 300,000 copies sold to date and eleven weeks at Mass-Market Fiction number one—and the e-book bounced back up into the Weekly E-Ranking top spot, with this its third consecutive week in pole position.
Cassandra Clare's Queen of Air and Darkness (S&S) was the highest new entry in second place, matching the author's record high position. This is fantasy YA author Clare's fourth appearance in the Weekly E-Ranking in total, with Queen of Air and Darkness' predecessor in the Dark Artifices trilogy Lord of Shadows also scoring second place in May 2017.
In the same week the hardback edition of Michelle Obama's Becoming (Viking) leapt 57% in volume—an increase of 35,000 copies—the e-book edition jumped up the E-Ranking, to third place. No doubt Obama's visit to London and her famously sold-out Southbank Centre event—which saw 47,000 people fail to get tickets—boosted her sales. Though the title is the print Christmas number one, and will find itself under a lot of Christmas trees next Tuesday, e-bookbuyers are clearly choosing to self-gift the former First Lady's memoir and consequently made it the bestselling non-fiction title in the Weekly E-Ranking, beating even four-week e-book number one Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt (Picador).
While festive-themed fiction performed solidly, with Milly Johnson's The Mother of All Christmases in 10th and Veronica Henry's Christmas at the Beach Hut in 17th, the chart was chockablock with titles whose doorstopper-sized hardback editions may prove unwieldly for the average commuter. Becoming, Queen of Air and Darkness, C J Sansom's Tombland (in ninth) and Robert Galbraith's Lethal White (in 11th), come in at a combined 2,860 pages. Savvy e-reader owners saved themselves a fair amount of bag space and back pain by opting for the digital edition.
| POS | MOVEMENT | TITLE | AUTHOR | IMPRINT | ISBN | DLP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | S | The Tattooist of Auschwitz | Heather Morris | Zaffre | 9781785763663 | £4.99 |
| 2 | N | Queen of Air and Darkness | Cassandra Clare | Simon & Schuster | 9781471116728 | £7.99 |
| 3 | U | Becoming | Michelle Obama | Viking | 9780241334157 | £11.99 |
| 4 | D | Past Tense | Lee Child | Transworld | 9781473542303 | £9.99 |
| 5 | D | THIS IS GOING TO HURT | Adam Kay | Picador | 9781509858644 | £8.99 |
| 6 | U | Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine | Gail Honeyman | HarperCollins | 9780008172138 | 3.99 |
| 7 | N | Of Blood and Bone | Nora Roberts | Little, Brown | 9780349414997 | £9.99 |
| 8 | U | The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle | Stuart Turton | Raven | 9781408889572 | £5.03 |
| 9 | D | Tombland | C J Sansom | Mantle | 9781447284529 | £16.99 |
| 10 | U | The Mother of All Christmases | Milly Johnson | Simon & Schuster | 9781471161926 | £3.99 |
| 11 | D | Lethal White | Galbraith, Robert | Little, Brown | 9780751572841 | £9.99 |
| 12 | S | Heads You Win | Jeffrey Archer | Pan Macmillan | 9781509851270 | £16.99 |
| 13 | D | Mythos | Stephen Fry | Michael Joseph | 9781405934169 | £4.99 |
| 14 | U | Lies Sleeping | Ben Aaronovitch | Orion | 9781473207844 | £9.99 |
| 15 | N | And So It Begins | Rachel Abbott | Headline | 9781472254924 | £4.99 |
| 16 | U | In a House of Lies | Ian Rankin | Orion | 9781409176916 | £9.99 |
| 17 | U | Christmas at the Beach Hut: The heartwarming holiday read you need for Christmas 2018 | Veronica Henry | Orion | 9781409166665 | £4.99 |
| 18 | U | The Fallen | David Baldacci | Pan Macmillan | 9781509874309 | £7.99 |
| 19 | D | Dark Sacred Night: The Brand New Bosch and Ballard Thriller (Harry Bosch Series Book 21) | Michael Connelly | Orion | 9781409182757 | £9.99 |
| 20 | U | The Rebel's Revenge | Scott Mariani | Avon | 9780008235932 | £3.99 |
Week ending 8th December 2018. Key: N = New, U = Up, S = Same, D = Down. Titles with a selling price below £2 are excluded, as are titles priced £4.50 or below with any print versions priced above £17.99. Participating publishers: PRH UK, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster, Bonnier Zaffre & Canongate.