Non-Fiction: Guinness World Records on top again
Guinness World Records 2023 has claimed the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for a third week running, selling 40,064 copies. With a hefty 10,000 units between itself and second-placed Richard Osman’s The Bullet that Missed (Viking), the latest edition of the Guinness World Records book jumped 11% in volume week on week.
No Guinness World Records title has spent as long in the overall top spot since Guinness World Records 2015, which notched up the number one spot in the three weeks running up to Christmas 2014. However, Guinness World Records 2023 may have peaked too early: last week the 2014-published edition was marginally ahead for the equivalent week for the first time since early November.
Despite Guinness World Records’ dominance, Trade Non-fiction sales were in dire straits last week, falling 22.4% in volume and 19.5% in value against the same week in 2021. Every major category fell year on
year last week in both volume and value, with even previously buoyant-looking Adult Fiction shaving off 4.3%
in volume and 2.2% in value. Pinch of Nom: Enjoy (Bluebird) is hovering on the horizon, ready to inject some New Year, new you energy into the stagnant Christmas-gift sector, but can it sell enough to lift the entire market?
Before readers of the charts pages hurry off to cancel the staff Christmas bonuses, let’s not forget that 2021 was the biggest year in value since records began, and last week was still an eye-watering 10% in volume and 12% up in value on the same week in pre-pandemic 2019.
Jordan Moore’s Interesting Facts for Curious Minds (Red Panda) leapfrogged Ben Macintyre’s SAS: Rogue Heroes (Penguin) to claim the Paperback Non-fiction number one. Last year’s leading celebrity memoirs were clearly top of the list for some Christmas stockings, with Mortimer’s And Away... (S&S) and Miriam Margolyes’ This Much is True (John Murray) returning to the paperback chart’s top five, and Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller (S&S) and Billy Connolly’s Windswept & Interesting (Two Roads) also bouncing up the chart.
It wasn’t all cuddly national treasures making their way under the nation’s Christmas trees, with Jack Rosewood’s The Ultimate Serial Killer Trivia Book (Lak) and Gareth Moore’s The Perfect Crime Puzzle Book (Michael O’Mara) débuting in the top 20.
