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Jeff Kinney's Hard Luck (Amulet) has topped the Nielsen BookScan US chart for the sixth straight week, scoring the writer his third Christmas number one in a row.
Kinney's eighth instalment in the Wimpy Kid series shifted 187,387 copies through the tills last week, bringing its total sales 1,459,640 print units since it was published on 5th November. Its seven-day sale pushes it past Dan Brown's Inferno (Doubleday) to become America's bestselling print book of 2013.
Inferno sold 19,178 books last week and has sold 1,351,861 since May. Kinney also has four other Wimpy Kid Titles in the current Top 100 based on sales through the seven-day period ending 16th December.
With two weeks until the end of the year, Hard Luck and Inferno are the only two books to have surpassed the one million copy mark. Bill O'Reilly's Killing Jesus (Holt)—which sold just under 88,000 units last week, bringing it to 911,235 for the year—seems the only other title certain to hit the one million milestone. If only three tiles crack one million, 2013 will have the lowest number of million-plus sellers in a calendar year in BookScan US history. Previous lows were five apiece in 2006 and 2011.
That said, the holiday season has been relatively strong for US bricks and mortar booksellers. Almost 22.7m print books were sold last week, up 19% on the previous week and 3% up on the same week in 2012.
The highest début in the BookScan US Top 100 was What Does the Fox Say? (Simon & Schuster), the spin-off from the YouTube hit by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. The book—which S&S only acquired in November—debuts in 21st place, selling 39,989 copies.