Wimpy Kid ends Walliams' run at top of charts

Jeff Kinney's newest Wimpy Kid title has débuted at number one, knocking David Walliams' Awful Auntie from the top of the UK Official Top 50 after a run of six consecutive weeks.

The Long Haul (Puffin), the ninth of Kinney's books featuring hapless middle schooler Greg Heffley, sold 59,315 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market, whilst Awful Auntie (HarperCollins Children's) slipped to second on a 32,556 unit sale.

This is Kinney's third straight Wimpy Kid title to hit the top spot in its first week, and Kinney's eighth week as the overall number one. However, The Long Haul's total is a significant 28.5% drop on the first week total on the last Wimpy Kid release, Hard Luck (Puffin), which shifted 82,999 copies in November 2013.     

Lynda Bellingham's There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (Coronet) notched up its third straight Hardback Non-Fiction number one. The late actress' memoir sold 27,272 copies, easily beating the second-placed HB NF title, Guinness World Records 2015 (GWR), by just under 12,000 units.

It was also the third straight number one for C J Sansom's Lamentation (Mantle, 10,032 copies) in Original Fiction and Peter James' Want You Dead (Macmillan, 14,049) in Mass Market Fiction. James just edged his and Sansom's Macmillan stablemate, David Baldacci, in Mass Market Fiction. Baldacci's The Target (Pan)—the American's third book featuring "stone-cold hitman" Will Robie—sold 13,151 copies, débuting at sixth in the overall chart and second in MMF.

YouTube superstar Alfie Deyes continued his run at the top of Paperback Non-Fiction, with The Pointless Book (Blink) shifting 7,562 copies through the tills. This is the third week in a row and eighth out of the last 10 in which he has been atop PB NF.
 
Overall, £28.7m was sold through the TCM, a marginal decline week on week (0.2%), but 5.9% down on the same week in 2013.