Father's Day titles climb charts, as Walliams keeps top spot

The World’s Worst Children 2 (HarperCollins Children's) has claimed a fourth week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 24,974 copies for £191,767. David Walliams has now spent a third of the year in the overall top spot thus far.

Father’s Day had a noticeable effect on the chart, with Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris’ Ladybird Book for Grown-Ups title How it Works: The Dad (Michael Joseph) returning to the Top 50, in 16th place, with total sales of 220,744 copies since publication last year, and Bruno Vincent’s spoof Famous Five book Five Lose Dad in the Garden Centre (Quercus) making its first appearance in the chart, in 28th place.

Ian Rankin’s Rather be the Devil (Orion) led the way for dad-fiction, entering the chart in second place and swiping the Mass Market Fiction number one from one-week-wonder Peter Robinson’s When the Music’s Over (Hodder). It sold 18,046 copies in its first week on sale, 5% up in volume on last year’s Even Dogs in the Wild.

Lee Child also benefitted, with both Night School and short story collection No Middle Name (both Bantam) inching upwards. Night School climbed one place to seventh in the overall chart, in its 11th week on sale, and No Middle Name jumped to second in Original Fiction, leapfrogging former number ones Into the Water (Doubleday) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Hamish Hamilton). But the Original Fiction top spot went to John Grisham’s Camino Island (Hodder & Stoughton), for the author's first week atop the chart since November 2010.

The Pre-School top 20 also got behind Father’s Day, with Mr Men: My Daddy (Egmont) fending off Peppa Pig: My Daddy (Ladybird) for a second week at the top spot. While Mr Men beat Peppa by 2,219, the cartoon pig knows all about strength in depth—her Peppa Goes to London, Peppa Pig: My Grandpa and Daddy Pig’s Words of Wisdom all hit the chart.

Though Joe Wicks’ Cooking for Family and Friends (Bluebird) held the Hardback Non-Fiction number one, Ben Macintyre’s SAS: Rogue Heroes (Viking) de-throned Michael Mosley and Tanya Borowski’s The Clever Guts Diet (Short) as Paperback Non-Fiction king. Again, the non-fiction charts were dad-land, with sports autobiographies-a-plenty, including Michael Dunlop’s Road Racer (Michael O'Mara) and Judy Murray’s Knowing the Score (Chatto & Windus) in the hardback chart and Damon Hill’s Watching the Wheels (Pan) and Guy Martin’s Worms to Catch (Virgin) in paperback. Former Christmas hits, Tim Peake’s Hello, is this Planet Earth? (Century) and The Ladybird Book of the Shed (Michael Joseph)—representing opposite ends of the dad-ambition-spectrum—also bounced back upwards.

Aside from Father’s Day gift buying, sagas had an excellent week; Dilly Court’s The Button Box (Harper) charted in sixth place, shifting 13,192 copies—the author’s highest-ever first week volume. And Nadine Dorries, formerly a Heatseekers veteran, squeaked into the Top 50 for the first time in 50th place, with The Children of Lovely Lane (Head of Zeus) selling 4,292 copies.

Week on week, the print market posted a 5.9% jump in volume and a 5.6% rise in value. But compared to 2016, volume was down a hefty 11%. A combination of the heatwave and Brexit-related uncertainty could be the culprit—but the same week in 2016 also saw Joe Wicks sell 92,837 copies of Lean in 15: The Shape Plan (Bluebird).