You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
An expanded time frame for redeeming World Book Day vouchers has given an early boost for the scheme's titles, with a Francesca Simon WBD title knocking The Fast Diet off the pinnacle of the The Official UK Top 50 after five consecutive weeks.
This year for the first time, WBD tokens were available to be redeemed a week early, from 25th February, giving the promotion a 10 day head start before the official launch on Thursday (7th March). In past years, vouchers were only allowed to be redeemed from the Monday of WBD week.
Four of the top five bestselling books for the week ending 2nd March through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market were WBD titles and all eight were in the top 18. In total, the eight £1 books shifted 122,437 copies through the tills.
Leading the field was Francesca Simon’s Horrid Henry’s Guide to Perfect Parents (Orion), Simon’s second overall number one. Her last appearance at the top of the overall chart was in 2005, also with a WBD title, Horrid Henry’s Bedtime (Orion), which interrupted a string of 11 consecutive number ones by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (Corgi).
Six years later, Simon has stopped another streak, ending The Fast Diet’s five week run at the top. In nine weeks in 2013, Mimi Spencer’s and Dr Michael Mosley’s books has sold 210,089 units sold for £987,263, which is a 107% greater in volume and 20.8% greater in value than publisher Short Books’ BookScan sales for its entire list in all of 2012.
Overall, booksellers experienced a marginal (0.2%) week on week growth through BookScan to £22.4m, though a 9.8% drop on the same week in 2012. Owing to the influx of the £1 WBD titles, volume sales actually rose a relatively healthy 3.3%.
The highest non-WBD new entry and the sole Top 50 first-timer is a woman who has helped put many an author on the charts: Judy Finnigan. Her début Eloise (Sphere) shifted an impressive 12,731 copies in its first week, though it was muscled out of the Mass Market top spot by James Patterson’s and Maxine Paetro’s 11th Hour (Arrow), and Gillian Flynn’s resilient Gone Girl (Phoenix).
Mary Berry and Lucy Young climbed up one place to secure a Hardback Non-Fiction number one, with At Home (BBC). It is “Great British Bake Off” star Berry’s second time on atop of the Hardback Non-Fiction chart after she stayed there for two weeks in February and March 2012 with Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook (DK).