Hawkins’ runaway 'Train' breaks paperback record

The new paperback of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) has hurtled into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot, selling 59,093 copies for £224,947 in its first three days on sale.

If considered a début—although Hawkins has been published before, The Girl on the Train is her first title written under her own name—Hawkins’ second overall UK number one earned the highest first week sale for a début adult paperback fiction title since Nielsen BookScan records began, racking up the biggest weekly sales for any fiction title in 2016 to date, and the largest one-week volume total for a Mass Market Fiction number one since E L James’ Grey (Arrow) was atop the chart last June.

The Girl on the Train has now become the fourth adult title since records began to hit the number one spot in both hardback and paperback, joining Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (Corgi), Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary (Picador) and J K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown). The psychological thriller topped the chart in hardback in March 2015, notching up a record total of 29 weeks atop the Original Fiction chart. For the first time since publication last week, it dropped out of the Original Fiction top 20.

Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15 (Bluebird) charted in second place, holding the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a 17th non-consecutive week. The "clean eating" cookbook’s weekly volume sales have remained incredibly consistent, only dropping 400 copies on the previous week.

Two new releases, Santa Montefiore’s Songs of Love and War (Simon & Schuster) and John Grisham’s Rogue Lawyer (Hodder), both shot straight into the top five, pushing former number one Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil (Sphere) down to sixth. In total, there were 22 new releases in the Top 50 last week—including Bookseller contributing editor Cathy Rentzenbrink’s The Last Act of Love (Picador), in 18th place. Speaking of The Bookseller, the BBIA 2016 Book of the Year, Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney (John Murray), continued its run in the Top 50 for a fourth week, charting 39th.

Sabrina Ghayour’s Sirocco (Mitchell Beazley) swiped the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Scarlett Moffatt’s Scarlett Says (Boxtree), while Danielle Steel’s The Apartment (Bantam) took the Original Fiction title, the author’s 12th week in the top spot.

Children’s titles have been a little quiet since World Book Day week, but last week saw a sudden influx of kids’ books into the chart. Liz Pichon’s Tom Gates: Super Good Skills (Almost…) (Scholastic) took the Children’s number one, shifting 6,693 copies, with Rick Riordan’s Hidden Oracle (Puffin) just one place below. Début Kiran Millwood-Hargrave’s The Girl of Ink & Stars (Chicken House) hit 33rd place, two places above Jacqueline Wilson’s Rent a Bridesmaid (Doubleday Children’s).

Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You (Michael Joseph) was the only title to climb the chart last week, jumping one place to 15th, and was joined in the Top 50 with its own film tie-in edition, which hit 38th place.