Blob breaks WBD records for a Walliams personal best

David Walliams has racked up the best single week of sales ever for a (single) World Book Day title, with Blob (HarperCollins Children's) soaring 449% in volume week on week to shift 103,571 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. Holding the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for a second week, Blob’s first full-week volume is also a personal best for the comedian-turned-author, beating his previous single-week high of 92,897 units sold, achieved by The Midnight Gang just 16 weeks ago.

Though compilation title The Children’s Book of Books (Penguin) shifted 211,456 copies during World Book Day celebrations in 1998, Walliams’ title boasts the biggest single-week volume of any lone WBD title, beating Francesca Simon’s 2005 title Horrid Henry’s Bedtime (Dolphin). Blob was also 98% up in volume on last year’s World Book Day number one, Cavan Scott’s Star Wars: The Escape (Egmont).

All 10 World Book Day titles charted at the top of the Top 50, shifting a whopping 469,274 copies between them—47% up on last year’s tranche. This was the first time since 2012 that the entire WBD collective topped the chart, and the first time ever that the Top 50 has seen an all-WBD top 10.

Peppa Loves World Book Day! (Ladybird) was in second—if not for Walliams, it would have been the biggest WBD number one for five years, at 59,719 copies sold—and Martin Handford’s Where’s Wally? The Fantastic Journey (Walker) hit a strong third. Claire Freedman & Ben Cort’s Everyone Loves Underpants (Simon & Schuster Children's) took fourth, while middle-grade fiction titles Jacqueline Wilson’s Butterfly Beach (Corgi), Simon’s Horrid Henry Funny Fact Files (Orion Children's), Enid Blyton’s Good Timmy and Other Stories (Hodder Children's) and Julia Donaldson & Lydia Monks’ Princess Mira-Belle and Snow White (Macmillan Children's) filled out fifth to eighth place. YA titles David Almond’s Island (Hodder Children's) and Michael Grant’s Dead of Night (Electric Monkey) out-performed, shifting 51,315 copies between them.

Walliams, predictably, saw his backlist boosted, charting six times total in the Top 50. J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2014 edition) had its best single week of sales ever, even topping the week Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) was released last year. And Roald Dahl’s classic Matilda and Jeff Kinney’s newest Wimpy Kid title Double Down (both Puffin) both re-entered the Top 50.

Philippa Gregory’s Three Sisters, Three Queens (Simon & Schuster) was the highest charting non-children’s title, holding the Mass Market Fiction number one for a second week. Mary Berry Everyday (BBC) soared 116% in volume to hit 13th overall and take the Hardback Non-Fiction number one for the first time; the start of her tie-in BBC TV show probably didn’t hinder sales.

Joanna Trollope’s City of Friends (Mantle) leapfrogged Chris Carter’s The Caller (Simon & Schuster) to hit the Original Fiction number one for the author’s sixth week atop the chart in total. The previous week’s Fiction Heatseekers number one, A A Dhand’s Streets of Darkness (Corgi), graduated into the Top 50 in 33rd place; Nicola Moriarty’s The Fifth Letter (Penguin) replaced it atop the Heatseekers top 10.

The market rocketed 22.7% in volume, to 3.8 million books sold, and 9.3% in value to £27.7m, its highest weekly volume and value for the year to date. But the week was up against Mother's Day 2016 in the year-on-year figures, suffering a 4.4% decline in value.