Zoella smashes first week début record

YouTube sensation Zoe Sugg has eclipsed superstars such as J K Rowling, Dan Brown and E L James to record the biggest first week sale for a début since records began.

Sugg, known as Zoella on her fashion and beauty vlog, which has over five million subscribers, shifted 78,109 copies of her Young Adult novel Girl Online (Penguin) through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market, easily topping the UK Official Top 50. Only 97 other weekly number ones have exceeded Girl Online's total since BookScan began compiling sales data in 1998.    

Data obtained by The Bookseller courtesy of Penguin Random house indicates additional digital sales of 4,000 copies for the bestseller last week.

Girl Online's first week has been helped by a massive marketing and publicity push from Sugg and Penguin, while benefiting from a media exposure which most débuts–which tend to start slowly–are not afforded. For example, James' Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow)–which at 4.6 million print units sold is not only the bestselling début but the bestselling title since BookScan records began–sold 14,814 copies in its first week of sale in June 2012.

Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Bloomsbury) was launched in the pre-BookScan era, so there are no official figures for it, but Potter mania did not truly take off until book three. The second title, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, sold 1,288 copies in its first official week of sale in July 1999, and we can safely assume a similar total for the first title.  Brown's UK début Angels and Demons (Corgi) sold 98 copies when released in June 2001 (Brown's USA debut, Digital Fortress, was published in America in 1998, but not in Britain until December 2003).  Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (ATOM), which has gone on to sell almost 574,000 units in all editions, sold just 53 copies when first published in January 2006.   

Girl Online even exceeds first time non-fiction, out-distancing top celebrity memoirs in their first week of sale such as Paul O'Grady's At My Mother's Knee (Bantam, 34,881 units in September 2008), Katie Price's Being Jordan (John Blake, 34,392 in May 2004) and Dawn French's Dear Fatty (Century, 27,795 in October 2008).  

Sugg displaced her Penguin stablemate Sylvia Day at the top of last week's chart, with Day's Captivated by You tumbling from first to sixth overall, yet still retaining its number one in Mass Market Fiction with a sale of 25,501 copies. Jeff Kinney's The Long Haul (Puffin) held onto the number two overall spot, with an impressive 18% rise week on week to 54,629 copies. That is the  fourth straight week the latest Wimpy Kid title has recorded sales of 45,000 copies or more.

The Girl Online media blitz was a boon for Sugg's boyfriend, fellow YouTuber Alfie Deyes. Deyes' The Pointless Book (Blink) had a 48.5% jump week on week, shifting 14,652 copies through the tills, and in the process chalking up the 11th Paperback Non-Fiction number one in 13 weeks.

With a sale of 12,322 copies, C J Sansom's Lamentation (Mantle) chalked up its fifth Original Fiction number one in the last six weeks. That is greatest number of weeks at the top of Original Fiction in 2014, eclipsing Jeffrey Archer's Be Careful What you Wish For (Macmillan) and "Robert Galbraith's" The Silkworm (Sphere) which have both spent four weeks at the summit.

Christmas book buying is starting to ramp up at the top of Hardback Non-Fiction with the first five books in the chart–led by Guinness World Record's 43,108 unit sale, its second consecutive week at the top–selling 116,128 copies, a 24.8% jump on the previous week.

And Christmas is beginning for bookseller full stop with sales through BookScan leapt 21% week on week to £41.7m. That is the best week of the year thus far through the TCM and the barest of margins down (-0.4%) on the same week in 2013.