Kinney takes US top spot again as Christmas sales surge 26%

As the Christmas rush got underway, the US book market surged again last week with print volumes increasing by 26% week on week.

Overall, just over 20m book sales registered through Nielsen BookScan in the seven days ending 7th December.

Jeff Kinney's The Long Haul (Amulet), enjoys another week at number one having sold and additional 152,316 copies and crossing the 1m unit barrier in its fifth chart-topping week.

Sales were down 31% on the previous week for the ninth instalment in the Wimpy Kid series but a similar pattern occurred last year. In the same week (Nielsen week 49) 2013's Hard Luck fell by 32%. That entrant, which also debuted at number one at the start of November 2013, had sold more up to this point, however, shifting 1.3m copies compared with just over 1m copies for The Long Haul. After five weeks, sales are down 16% to date but nevertheless, a week on week decline in sales did not prevent Kinney from claiming the Christmas top spot in 2013 and 2012 (with The Third Wheel).

The Long Haul was one of just two titles in the Top 10 to post week on week declines. Kinney was joined by James Patterson whose latest thriller, Hope to Die (Little, Brown) sold 55, 792 copies, down 12% week-on-week. Despite the decline, his book rose four places in the chart to number six.

In contrast, many titles which had fallen out of the Top 10 in previous weeks rebounded. Bill O'Reilly's Killing Patton (Henry Holt, 81,367 copies), George W Bush's 41: A Portrait of My Father (Crown, 63,943 copies), Ina Garten's Make It Ahead (Clarkson Potter 47,823 copies) and John Grisham's Gray Mountain (Doubleday, 47,374 copies) all saw double digit growth and all climbed back into the Top 10 in third, fifth, eighth and ninth spots respectively. Publisher CCA & B claimed the same two positions in the Top 10 as they did in the same week last year, with two separate versions of Elf on the Shelf in second and fourth spots. The two editions sold 161,469 copies combined, up 52% week on week. The $24.95 version is also the top selling title on the Juvenile Non-fiction list. Overall Juvenile sales increased by 11% with 8.5m registered book sales. Juvenile Non-fiction grew by 30% week on week (2m units) and fiction grew by 6% (6.4m units).

In seventh place on the overall Top 10, Brandon Stanton is the chart's only Top 100 new entrant with Humans of New York (St. Martin's Press). The $29.99 photographic "census" of the Big Apple's diverse population jumped 861% in volume terms selling 48,301 copies for a new total of 121,687 copies since publication back in October last year.

The overall volume of the Top 10 was down by 14% on the same week last year when the 10 coveted positions accounted for 822,328 combined book sales in comparison to 705,614 this year.

Week on week the value of the Top 100 also shrank by 19% as Black Friday deals came to an end and sales of discounted children's books, which had dominated the chart, inevitably declined. Frontlist sales increased by 12% overall to 8.7m units - 43% of the BookScan total volume - but backlist sales increased by 40% shifting 11.4 million units.

Volumes in the fiction list grew by 28% (3.4m units). Patterson remained top of the pile despite declining sales week on week, but increases at the top end of the list came from Stephen King's Revival (Scribner) up 8% in third place selling 38,303 copies and Debbie Macomber's Home in Seattle (Harlequin) climbing seven places to number six. Sales were also bolstered by Mark Greaney's Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect (Putnam Adult), which debuted at number five with a first week sale of 35,281 copies in hardcover. This is the first Jack Ryan novel Greaney has written alone following the death of Tom Clancy last October and first week sales were unsurprisingly down - by 52% - on first week sales for Command Authority, which topped the Fiction list in the same week last December but proved to be Clancy's final novel.

Adult Non-fiction grew by 47% in volume across the TCM with 6.9m units sold. O'Reilly and former President George W Bush maintained their positions at number one and two respectively with strong week on week increases. Six Non-fiction titles sold in excess of 40,000 copies last week, including the Guinness World Records 2015, a non-mover in sixth (GWR, 42,996 copies) and the $16 paperback edition of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken (Random House Trade, 47,229 copies) now in its 19th week on the chart, up three places to round off the Non-fiction list's Top 5.