Bluey is top dog for fourth week running

In the week of World Book Day, the 12 £1 titles given out by bookshops in exchange for vouchers have seen a total of 417,957 copies pass through the tills, according to the latest data from Nielsen Book Scan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).  

Bluey (Ladybird) leads the class of 2025 – which takes up the first 12 slots of the Official UK Top 50 for the first time this year – with a total of 54,529 copies, up 56.1% compared to the previous seven-day period. While this will be the peak for the WBD 2025 titles, expect to see them in the Top 50 for the next fortnight or so, though Bluey may well lose her crown to another title next week.

Contenders for that coveted number one spot include this week’s highest new entries – Elsie Silver’s Wild Side (Piatkus) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count (Fourth Estate), which take the top spots in the Mass Market Fiction (MMF) and Original Fiction charts respectively but must settle for 13th and 14th place in the overall Top 50.

Silver’s Wild Side is the third book in the author’s Rose Hill series and has debuted in the TCM with sales of 17,283 – a figure which in any other week would put it comfortably at number one. It’s the author’s highest single-week performance beating the debut of Wild Eyes which was published in September of 2024 with sales of 13,829 – a fifth lower than the latest release.

Dream Count is Ngozi Adichie’s first full-length novel since 2013’s Americanah and has sold 15,646 copies in its first week on sale, more than three times as many as this week’s second bestselling hardback – Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm (Piatkus). It’s a long way to go to catch up with Ngozi Adichie’s bestselling title – Half of a Yellow Sun has sold a huge 694,396 copies across all editions in its lifetime, making it one of the 100 bestselling fiction titles since accurate records began.

As well as World Book Day, last week also saw International Women’s Day a fact that has helped poet Donna Ashworth’s latest collection rise eight places to the top of the Hardback Non-Fiction chart with sales of 6,493 – a 196.3% rise compared to the previous seven days.

The highest new entry is Give it a Grow by Martha Swales which makes it to sixth place with 3,585 copies sold – but it’s not enough to make it into the TCM’s Top 50, which features just two new titles this week – the aforementioned Silver and Ngozie Adichie.

It’s a light week for new releases in the Paperback Non-Fiction chart too, with just Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time (Picador) making it to third place with 2,718 copies. Perennial bestseller Atomic Habits by James Clear (Random House Business) rises to second place with flat sales – but Gary Stevenson’s The Trading Game keeps hold of first place here with 5,195 copies sold – nearly a third down on the previous week.

As with the Top 50, the children’s chart is dominated by the WBD titles – but it’s been a good week for Dav Pilkey who bags the two bestselling non-WBD titles with The Scarlet Shedder and Big Jim Begins (Scholastic) whose combined sales are up 21.1% compared with the previous seven-day period.

In total, World Book Day footfall has helped deliver total volume sales of 3.8 million books, up 7.8% on last week and a total value of £30.6m up 0.9% week-on-week. Volumes sales are down 11.2% year-on-year while value drops 10.3%.