Non-fiction: It’s carry on Harry as prince retains crown
Prince Harry’s Spare (Bantam) plummeted in sales in its second week on the shelves, falling 82% in volume week on week from its towering launch-week sales. However, at 82,538 copies sold, it was still far and away the Official UK Top 50 number one, with more than 70,000 copies between it and second-placed Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book (Ebury).
Of course, with Spare selling just under half a million copies in its first week, a swift drop was expected. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury), the fastest-selling book in history, shaved off over 1.2 million units in its second week on sale in summer 2007. Similarly, the fastest-selling Adult Fiction book of all time, Spare’s Transworld stablemate The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, dropped 68% in its second week on sale in 2009, shedding in excess of 375,000 copies. The effect will be even more pronounced with Spare—not only did the national news speak of little else during its launch week, but the pre-order market has sharpened considerably since the Noughties, boosting first-week sales even further.
At a whisker under 550,000 copies sold in total in the week and a half since publication it’ll be an uphill climb for any title hoping to leapfrog Spare to become the bestselling title of the year. Surely only a surprise ninth Harry Potter book or Prince William’s memoir (working title: Heir) could upset the apple cart at this point. Spare is fewer than 150,000 copies away from the volume posted last year by 2022’s bestseller, Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (S&S). Value for 2023 is already over £100m, 6.4% ahead of 2022’s first three weeks, with Trade Non-Fiction up 12% year on year.
Weekly, print fell abruptly on the previous week’s buoyant figures, dropping 13.7% in volume and 17.6% in value. Against the third week of 2022, volume was a shade down (–0.1%), by just over 3,000 copies, with Spare’s £14.24 average selling price naturally pushing value higher, to a 5.3% bump.
“New Year, new you” has been rather overshadowed by the fifth-in-line to the throne, though the healthy eating cookbooks and self-help guides have continued to file into the non-fiction charts. Nathan Anthony’s Bored of Lunch claimed a second week in the runner-up spot, with Pinch of Nom: Enjoy (Bluebird) joining it in third once again.
Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act (Canongate) was the highest new entry in Hardback Non-fiction, with Cariad Lloyd’s You Are Not Alone (Bloomsbury Tonic) scoring 16th place.
Spare wasn’t the only misery memoir atop the non-fiction charts last week—Dr Clare Bailey and Kathryn Bruton’s The Fast 800 Keto Recipe Book (Short) was knocked from the top of Paperback Non-fiction by Cathy Glass’ Unwanted (HarperCollins), which sold 9,861 copies to score the foster carer-turned-author her 15th category chart number one.
