Blob goes straight into the top spot ahead of World Book Day

David Walliams has splashed into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot with Blob (HarperCollins Children's), for his 23rd overall top spot and his 10th inside the last 52 weeks. A week before World Book Day on 2nd March, Blob shifted a solid 18,864 copies for £18,864 (according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market) on just two days’ worth of sales.

For the second week running, the comedian-turned-author leapfrogged himself for the Children’s number one, defeating Grandpa’s Great Escape for his 86th week atop the category chart. Apart from a brief hiatus for J K Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Little, Brown) in the last week of 2016, Walliams has held the Children’s top spot (with three different titles) since the start of November—almost four straight months.

With a bumper World Book Day crop this year for the 20th anniversary, WBD titles were already flooding the charts. Peppa Loves World Book Day! (Ladybird) sold 4,677 to claim the Children’s Pre-School top 20 number one, while Jacqueline Wilson’s Butterfly Beach (Corgi) fluttered to just outside the Top 50. And non-WBD titles got a boost too: the second bestselling children’s book of all time Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury) Wingardium Leviosa’d up 27 places to 17th place, while Walliams’ Gangsta Granny stole away with 29th, after re-entering the Top 50 a week ago.

It was a healthy week for new entries, with an all-new top three: Blob, Philippa Gregory’s Three Sisters, Three Queens (Simon & Schuster), and Jilly Cooper’s Mount! (Corgi). As she has done for five out of the last six years, Gregory conquered the Mass Market Fiction number one spot, crowning an all-female-authored top 10.

As well as World Book Day, Mother’s Day gift-purchases made an entrance, with Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum, Happy Baby (Coronet) selling 9,750 copies to swipe the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Tom Kerridge. This is more than 2,000 copies (30%) up on her biggest first week for any of her fiction titles. The Unmumsy Mum Diary, parenting blogger The Unmumsy Mum’s follow-up to her 2016 guide, which has shifted over 125,000 copies, hit 21st place overall, selling 5,257 copies.

Chris Carter’s The Caller (Simon & Schuster) dialled up the Original Fiction number one—the author’s first—with 4,527 copies sold, denying Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology a third week at the top and gifting S&S both fiction top spots.

Once again, the Fiction Heatseekers chart, which tracks the bestsellers of fiction outside the Top 50, was a hotbed of activity, with five new entries charting in the top 10. The number one spot was taken by A A Dhand’s Streets of Darkness, which shifted 3,248 copies. While 2017’s overall number one titles so far have been historically low sellers, the Fiction Heatseekers number one volumes have been contrastingly buoyant. Last week was the fifth week in a row with a number one selling above the 3,000-copies-mark—remarkably healthy for this time of year.

The market as a whole, at £25.3m, was marginally down in value on the week before, by 3.8%, but nosed ahead of the same week in 2016 by 0.9%. 2017's eight-week total is now just £1.6m down on the same point in 2016—a gap of 0.8%.