Wicks burns bright while Hardinge and Atkinson count the Costa

Joe “The Body Coach” Wicks continues to dominate the charts as Lean in 15 (Bluebird) held the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for a fifth consecutive week with 47,245 copies sold for £377,932, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The Instagram star’s sales have remained at an impressively high level over the last five weeks—Lean in 15’s volume last week was only 38% down on its launch week volume.

Wicks’ debut cookbook is the first title to reign over the chart for five consecutive weeks since David Walliams’ Awful Auntie (HarperCollins Children’s) spent six weeks at the top in autumn 2014, and the first Paperback Non-Fiction title to do so since Mimi Spencer and Dr Michael Mosley’s The Fast Diet (Short) in January three years ago. Lean in 15 is now just 35,000 copies away from eclipsing 2015’s biggest-selling Food & Drink title, Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food (Michael Joseph), in volume.

John Pearson’s Kray brothers biography The Profession of Violence (William Collins) was a new entry in second place with 19,883 copies sold, on the back of a Sainsbury’s promotion which had the book packaged with the DVD of the Tom Hardy Krays film, “Legend”.  Another tie-in edition of The Profession of Violence also charted in the top 100 last week, selling 2,579 units and hitting 15th on the Paperback Non-Fiction chart.

Similar Sainsbury’s book/DVD deals were very successful in 2015, giving an overall UK number one to Jane Hawking’s Travelling to Infinity (Alma) and a Paperback Non-Fiction top spot to Chris Kyle’s American Sniper (HarperCollins).

Kate Atkinson’s Costa Novel Award winner A God in Ruins (Black Swan) saw a 10.2% boost in volume, leapfrogging Deliciously Ella Every Day (Yellow Kite) to take third place, while the surprise Costa overall winner, Frances Hardinge, made her first appearance in the Top 50. Hardinge’s The Lie Tree (Macmillan Children’s) hit 21st place, shifting 6,028 copies since the announcement of its win last Tuesday. This was an 876% boost in volume on the week before. Ahead of the announcement, it had sold a total of 6,694 copies since its release in May 2015. The Lie Tree’s current total sale of 12,722 copies make it Hardinge’s biggest-selling title to date by some way, beating 2005’s Fly By Night (Macmillan Children’s) by nearly 4,000 copies.

The last Children’s title to win the Costa/Whitbread Book of the Year title was Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass (Scholastic) in 2001, which sold over 650,000 copies in paperback. The biggest-selling Costa/Whitbread winner since Nielsen records began in 1998 is Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Vintage), which shifted 1.67m copies in paperback after its 2003 win.

Atkinson has now missed out the overall title for the second time in two years, after Life After Life (Black Swan) was defeated by Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall (Borough Press) for the Costa Book of the Year 2013. However, Life After Life still outsold Filer’s debut by over 100,000 copies, and the paperback of A God in Ruins has a 64,000-copy head start on The Lie Tree.  

Despite Hardinge’s win, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (Puffin) took the Children’s number one spot for a seventh non-consecutive week. Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) was toppled from its Original Fiction number one, as Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time (Jonathan Cape) entered the chart in 14th place. Barnes’ last novel, The Sense of an Ending (Vintage), won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 and shifted 149,510 copies in hardback.

The Harry Potter Colouring Book (Studio Press), the only big Christmas hit to still in the top ten, was joined in the Top 50 last week by its sequel, the Harry Potter Magical Creatures Colouring Book (Studio Press), which shifted 5,332 copies to take 29th place. The original has shifted 314,410 copies to date since last November and is currently the biggest selling colouring book title of 2016.

In total, £26.6m was spent on books last week, up 4.1% on the week before and a stunning 14.8% increase on the same week in 2015.