Tom Kerridge gets a Dopamine boost back into the top spot

Tom Kerridge’s Dopamine Diet (Absolute) has boomeranged back into the number one spot, selling 15,532 copies for £131,405. Three weeks after Val McDermid’s Out of Bounds knocked it off the top, Dopamine Diet got its own back and leapfrogged the crime title for a second week at number one.

Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard (Faber & Faber) held second place overall but, with its BBC adaptation concluding over Sunday and Monday last week, jumped 8.5% in volume to 12,666 copies sold and leapfrogged Out of Bounds to take the Mass Market Fiction number one—the author’s first top spot.

James Martin’s French Adventure (Quadrille) was the highest new entry in third, shifting 11,837 copies—the chef’s biggest first-week volume to date, improving on 2016’s More Home Comforts by a beefy 154%.

Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (Bloomsbury) hammered into the Original Fiction number one, shifting 9,566 copies to hit sixth place overall. It was a healthy week for hardback fiction: three titles hit the Top 50, after a string of weeks with none at all in the chart’s upper echleons. Alongside Norse Mythology, Kimberley Chambers’ Backstabber (HarperCollins) and Sophie Kinsella’s My Not So Perfect Life (Bantam) charted in 29th and 38th respectively. J P Delaney’s The Girl Before (Quercus) climbed week on week to just outside the Top 50, taking the Fiction Heatseekers number one from Trump-bumped Nineteen Eighty-four (Penguin).

Sebastian Barry’s Costa Book of the Year Days Without End (Faber & Faber) shot into the Top 50 in its first week in paperback, shifting 5,752 copies.

While David Walliams’ The Midnight Gang (HarperCollins Children's) held the Children’s chart for a 14th week (bringing his personal total up to 84 weeks), the newly-released paperback edition of Grandpa’s Great Escape hit third place, to make four Walliams titles in the top 10. The latest Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month, Maz Evans’ Who Let the Gods Out? (Chicken House) charted 17th in the Children’s & YA Fiction chart, shifting 2,129 copies.

The print market increased in value and volume week on week for a third consecutive week. However, the first six weeks of 2017 are down 1.9% in value on 2016’s first six weeks. This year is still lacking the sales impact of a runaway hit, such as Lean in 15 last year. But so far, 2017 isn’t a catastrophe (if one is purely referring to the print market and nothing else): it’s 11% up on the first six weeks of 2015.