'Night School' takes Lee Child to 16th number one

Lee Child has tussled his way into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for a 16th time, with Night School (Bantam) shifting 36,151 copies for £144,387, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. Its first-week volume was 4.2% up on Child’s 2016 number one Make Me, selling an extra 1,489 copies to become the veteran author’s second fastest-selling paperback title to date.

Night School’s hardback, cannily released just six weeks before Christmas 2016, became the biggest-selling hardback fiction title of the year and helped to bump up Child’s annual value by 12%.  As a result of its searing first-week sales of 48,026 copies, the paperback becomes the first Jack Reacher title to sell at a slower rate than its hardback.

However, the paperback Reacher prequel racked up the highest single-week sale of any fiction title this year by some way, outselling Philippa Gregory’s Three Sisters, Three Queens (Simon & Schuster) by over 16,000 copies. It is also the fourth year in a row that Child has gone straight into the top spot.

Mary Berry Everyday (BBC) held firm at second place and reclaimed the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Ian Nathan’s Inside the Magic (HarperCollins), but otherwise new titles dominated: Santa Montefiore’s Daughters of Castle Deverill (Simon & Schuster), Karin Slaughter’s The Kept Woman (Arrow) and Carole Matthews’ Paper Hearts and Summer Kisses (Sphere), all went straight into the top 10.

The Original Fiction top 20 was hit by a barrage of seven new titles, all charting in the chart’s upper half. John Connolly’s A Game of Ghosts (Hodder & Stoughton) swiped the number one from Wilbur Smith and David Churchill’s War Cry (HarperCollins). The author topped the chart for the first time exactly a year ago with A Time of Torment, although curiously, the recently-released paperback is yet to trouble the Mass Market Fiction chart. Maybe his fans are all rich and impatient.

Remember this day: for the first time in 2017, the Children’s number one is not a David Walliams title. In fact, it is the first time since early April 2016 (when David Solomon's My Brother is a Superhero hit the top spot) that neither Walliams, J K Rowling or Liz Pichon is the kids’ number one. YouTuber Oli White has taken the crown, with his sequel Generation Next: The Takeover (Hodder & Stoughton) swooping straight into the top spot. It becomes the first Young Adult Fiction title to hit the number one since Frances Hardinge’s Costa winner The Lie Tree (Macmillan Children's), which climbed the chart all the way back in February 2016.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year The Girl of Ink & Stars (Chicken House) rocketed back into the Top 50, reaching its highest single-week volume yet of 5,092 copies sold.

After spending 2016 in lockdown by Joe Wicks, the Paperback Non-Fiction top 20 is suddenly enjoying a period of frenzied activity. The Playfair Cricket Annual 2017 (Headline) toppled Tom Marcus’ Soldier Spy (Penguin) to take the number one spot. Yuval Noah Harari’s duology Sapiens and Homo Deus (Vintage) held firm in second and third, while Amelia Freer’s Nourish and Glow: The 10 Day Plan (Michael Joseph), Philippe Sands’ East West Street (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) and Chris Packham’s Fingers in the Sparkle Jar (Ebury) all entered the top 20. Wicks’ blockbuster Lean in 15 (Bluebird) charted at 48th overall last week: after 67 weeks, it may finally be about to drop out of the Top 50. Until Lean in 15 4 comes out, of course.

The print market continued to post good figures, shifting three million books and bringing in a whisker under £25m. This was a 2.2% jump in value on the week before and a 1.7% increase on the same week in 2016—the fifth consecutive week that 2017 has posted a year on year improvement.