Pratchett’s Discworld swansong romps to number one

Sir Terry Pratchett’s 41st and final Discworld novel The Shepherd’s Crown (Doubleday Children’s) grabbed the UK Official Number one by a sizeable margin, outselling the much-hyped Stieg Larsson reboot by over 37,000 copies.

The Shepherd’s Crown sold 52,846 units last week through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, earning just under £600,000, representing Pratchett’s second-best ever weekly sale for a hardback (Snuff shifted almost 55,000 units in the week ending 15th October, 2011), and his best for a Young Adult title. Sir Terry has now claimed the overall British number one 10 times, and it is his 39th week atop the Children’s chart.

Pratchett’s number one marks the first time a posthumously published title has topped the charts since Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Quercus) in April 2010—Jennifer Worth’s Call the Midwife (Orion) hit number one March 2012, a little under a year after she died, but the title was originally published in her lifetime.

David Lagercrantz’s continuation of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl in the Spider’s Web (MacLehose), sold 15,549 units, hitting third place overall, behind Pratchett and Jeffrey Archer’s Mightier Than the Sword (Picador, 19,474 units). Given the mass of pre-publication publicity, MacLehose may be a tad disappointed in The Girl in the Spider’s Web’s first-week haul. But Lagercrantz’s novel does claim the Original Fiction number one, and it is worth noting that only five times thus far in 2015 has an Original Fiction top earner shifted more than 15,000 copies. Lagercrantz ended the run of two straight weeks at the top for Philippa Gregory’s The Taming of the Queen (Simon & Schuster), which drops to third place on an 8,776-unit sale.

A spokesperson for Quercus has told The Bookseller that The Girl in the Spider's Web has sold 50,000 copies altogether including print, e-book and export.     

Archer captured his eighth Mass Market Fiction number one; his previous outing in the Clifton Chronicles, Be Careful What You Wish For (Pan), accomplished the same feat in the same week last year, selling an almost identical amount of units (19,100). Meanwhile, Millie Marotta’s Animal Kingdom (Batsford, 12,363 copies) continued its run with a 13th non-consecutive Paperback Non-Fiction top spot.       

Jamie Oliver’s autumn release usually marks the unofficial starting gun for Christmas number one race. Everyday Super Food (Michael Joseph) has begun well, easily nabbed the Hardback Non-Fiction pole position and shifting 15,073 copies, over three times as many units as second-placed Linda Collister’s Great British Bake Off: Celebrations (Hodder).

Last week’s surprise hit Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin’s self-published The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep (Createspace) continued to sell strongly. The picture book, which purports to send  children to sleep quickly, sold 8,984 copies, hitting 14th place overall. World English language rights to the self-published title have just been bought by Penguin Random House Children's in the UK in a joint deal with the US. The title will be published in print on 2nd October, and be taken off sale on Createspace at the end of the day (2nd September), with pre-orders available at the end of the day.  

Overall, the rainy Bank Holiday weekend may have helped bookshops. Just over £25.5m was spent in shops last week, an 8.9% rise on the previous week and 8.5% up on the last week of August 2014.