Zoella keeps top spot in Christmas-fuelled charts

YouTube star Zoe Sugg, aka Zoella, shrugged off a mild ghostwriting controversy to retain the top spot of the UK Official Top 50 for the second straight week, with her Young Adult novel Girl Online (Penguin) becoming 2014's fastest selling book.

Girl Online shifted 55,971 copies through Nielsen BookScan last week, which is a 28.4% drop off from her record-setting first week total of 78,109 units. Yet her combined sales of 134,080 copies beats 2014's previous two-week record, the 120,160 copies Jeff Kinney's The Long Haul (Puffin) sold in its first fortnight of release. 

It is a crucial week for Sugg to be at the summit: in the previous four years the book that held the top spot in the equivalent week (BookScan's 49th week of the year) has gone on to become the Christmas number one.  

Kinney's The Long Haul was in second place overall for the second week in a row with 47,302 copies sold, outpacing third-placed (and Hardback Non-Fiction chart number one) Guinness World Records 2015 (GWR), by just 684 units.

As the retailers' Christmas campaigns ramp up, there does seem to be some solidifying at the top of some of the charts. GWR 2015 and Lynda Bellingham's There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (Coronet, 31,514 copies) have traded the Hardback Non-Fiction number one spot for the last seven weeks. Both books have enjoyed solid week on week volume rises: 8% for GWR, 4% for Bellingham, with second-placed Bellingham selling 10,000 units more than the third-placed Private Eye Annual 2014 (Private Eye 21,131).   

C J Sansom, meanwhile has notched up his sixth Original Fiction number one in the last seven weeks, with Lamentation (Mantle, 14,951 units) outselling the next bestselling Original Fiction title—Jesse Burton's resurgent The Miniaturist (Picador)—by 5,101 copies.

Lamentation has sold almost 100,000 print copies in seven weeks, and will likely surpass Sansom's previous bestselling hardback, 2010's Heartstone (Mantle, 134,000 copies), by Christmas week.   

Sugg's boyfriend and fellow YouTuber Alfie Deyes has now recorded an impressive 12th week as the Paperback Non-Fiction number one. Deyes' The Pointless Book (Blink) sold 15,424 copies—his best weekly sale of the year—and has thus far been worth almost £955,000 to booksellers.

The only number one to change week on week was Mass Market Fiction, with James Patterson's Unlucky 13 (Arrow), his 13th Women's Murder Club book, selling 18,808 copies in its first week of release, dislodging Sylvia Day's Captivated by You (Penguin, 14,931 copies).  

A possibility for Christmas number one may be in this week's second highest début, Egmont's latest in its official Minecraft range, Blockopedia, which sold an impressive 16,033 copies to hit 14th place overall. The book, however, is something of a Christmas gamble for Egmont with its relatively high £30 RRP; the other titles the breakout franchise of the last 12 months (sales of £10.8m through BookScan) retail for £7.99.    

Overall last week was the biggest for booksellers thus far this year with £52.5m sold through BookScan. That is a 25.8% leap from last week (£41.7m), but 2.2% down on the same week in 2013.