Non-fiction: Bored of Lunch ascends to number one

The reign of Prince Harry’s Spare (Bantam) in the Official UK Top 50 number one came to an abrupt end, as Nathan Anthony’s Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book (Ebury) claimed the crown. This was the second week at the top for Anthony’s début cookbook, after swiping the directly pre-Spare pole in the first week of January.

However, last week saw the slow cooker book rise 147% week on week to 48,060 copies sold—more than 10,000 units above its launch-week volume. Given many of the food-blogger-to-cookbook-author titles will see particularly high first-week sales, due to the pre-orders racking up from a book’s announcement onwards—Pinch of Nom is a shining example, regularly notch-ing up 120,000-plus copies in its heyday—this was impressive. The title’s serialisation in the Sun last week helped boost it, with the cookbook featuring in the paper’s Save Pennies, Lose Pounds series. Anthony seems to have hit on the sweet spot between the classic slimming recipe book and the 2023 twist of using an energy-efficient kitchen appliance to keep bills down.

Perhaps the long-awaited January paycheque hitting the nation’s bank accounts inspired a late resurgence for “New Year, new you”, which had a slower-than-usual start to the year after Spare soaked up all the attention. Week on week, the print market’s volume jumped 7.3% and its value rose 7.9% to 3.6 million copies sold for £32.2m, with the overall average sell-ing price bouncing back over £9.

Bored of Lunch re-claimed the Hardback Non-fiction number one and shunted Spare to second, as Sarah Rossi’s What’s for Dinner? (HarperCollins), Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules for Love (Thorsons), baking blogger Eloise Head’s Fitwaffle’s Baked in One (Ebury) and Pamela Anderson’s memoir Love, Pamela (Headline) made their débuts in the top 10.

The Paperback Non-fiction chart clambered back on the “New Year, new you” bandwagon, with James Clear’s evergreen Atomic Habits knocking Cathy Glass’ Unwanted (HarperCollins) from the top. Despite Atomic Habits’ reliable presence in the January charts since 2021, following the year daily routines went out the window, this is its first week in the paperback pole.