Father’s Day chart fillip led by Wicks’ second sizzler

Joe “The Body Coach” Wicks’ follow-up to his record-setting début fitness title has rocketed to the top of the charts in a strong week overall as a Father’s Day surge boosted print book sales by almost 20%.

Wicks’ Lean in 15: The Shape Plan (Bluebird) sold just under 93,000 units through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, shifting 53,000 copies more than the next bestselling book. It also had just over £700,000 in value sales while no other book earned more than £200,000 through the TCM last week.

The Instagram star’s 93,000 units—actually achieved on three days of sale and pre-orders—has only been topped once this year by Wicks’ own original title, Lean in 15 (Bluebird), which sold 111,830 copies in its second week on sale in January.

Its initial seven-day sales total bodes well for the future success of Lean in 15: The Shape Plan as it represents a 20.4% uplift on the 77,000 units Lean in 15 took in on its first week of sale. The original Lean in 15—which was also in last week’s top five—is by far 2016’s bestselling book, shifting about 400,000 more units than the mass market paperback edition of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan). All told, Wicks has now had 10 overall number ones this year and has sold over £6.8m through the TCM since first being published in the last week of 2015. 

The title Wicks beat to the number one spot was one which benefited from Father’s Day: Jason Hazeley’s and Joel Morris’ latest in the Ladybird for Grown-ups series, How it Works: The Dad (Michael Joseph), which sold 39,424 copies, the title’s best weekly total since being released in May.  That represented an impressive 132% jump on HIW: The Dad’s previous week’s sales. We should note that mums did better than the dads: Hazeley’s and Morris’ How it Works: The Mum (Michael Joseph) sold 46,326 units in the seven days prior to Mother’s Day earlier this year.

However, a few other Ladybird for Grownups titles that were undoubtedly given as Father’s Day gifts performed well last week, including HIW: The Husband (4,777 units, up 62.7% week on week), The Ladybird Book of the Shed (3,916, +122%) and The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis (3,078, +74%), the last of which dad undoubtedly unwrapped with a fixed smile and as much good grace as he could muster.

There were a plethora of other Father’s Day-type titles which surged up, or entered, the Top 50 last week including Bill Bryson’s 17th- placed The Road to Little Dribbling (Black Swan, 9,792 copies); Wilbur Smith and Giles Kristian’s Golden Lion (Harper) which climbed four places to 21st on 8,306 units; and two Peppa Pig books in 38th and 39th place—Daddy Pig’s Words of Wisdom (Ladybird, 5,864 copies) and Peppa Pig: My Daddy (Ladybird, 5,671).

Indeed, it was a rather blokey at the top of most of the charts last week. Stephen King earned his second straight Original Fiction number one with End of Watch (Hodder, 6,395 copies), in a chart which the bestselling nine titles were all written by men. Emma Cline’s critically-lauded The Girls (Chatto, 2,024) was the first title written by a woman at number 10. Similarly, in Paperback Fiction, the first six books were written by men, topped by the two Wicks titles.

In Children’s, David Walliams’ The World’s Worst Children (HarperCollins Children’s Books, 24,802) earned its fifth consecutive number one. Women, or rather a girl, still ruled in Mass Market Fiction, with Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train chalking up its seventh pole position on the trot.

All in the all, the Father’s Day shopping helped the market. Sales were at £27.2m through the TCM, up 19.7% on the previous week and 25.1% on the same week in 2015.