Non-Fiction: Jamie's One hits the top

So far, 2022 has been a year of low-selling number ones, but with the unofficial starting gun on the Christmas season fired (a.k.a., the latest Jamie Oliver cookbook was released), this could be the week it all changes. In any other week, Oliver’s One: Simple One-Pan Wonders (Michael Joseph) would have shimmied up the chart into the overall top spot—its first-week sales of 46,121 copies was the second-highest for a non-fiction title so far this year, after Kay and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Comfort Food (Bluebird) in January. Of course, it was pipped to the post by Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart (Sphere), by fewer than 5,000 copies.

However, we could be looking at the foothills of what will become a towering peak. Oliver’s numerically-titled cookbooks, 2010’s 30-Minute Meals, 2012’s 15-Minute Meals and 2017’s 5 Ingredients, have all topped one million copies sold. In fact, 30-Minute Meals is still the bestselling Food & Drink title of all time, at just under 1.9 million books sold, and 5 Ingredients has surpassed 15-Minute Meals to become Oliver’s second-bestselling title at 1.2 million copies sold. One is off to an eye-watering start, a hefty 10,000 copies above 5 Ingredients’ first week and 16,000 above 30-Minute Meals.

The one-pot cookbook is a tried-and-tested sales winner, with most recently Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin series shifting 820,000 copies combined. With 30-Minute Meals toppping 140,000 copies sold per week in the run-up to Christmas 2010, One really could be the biggest ever—so much so that Oliver could leapfrog back ahead of Julia Donaldson to become the second-bestselling BookScan author of all time, after J-Don surpassed him in the first half of the year.

With the Christmas bells jingling in the distance, the print market rocketed 10.5% in volume and 12% in value week on week. At 3.8 million books sold for £32.9m, it was the best week for both volume and value since the first week of 2022. 

Both non-fiction charts had a new number one, with One naturally taking the Hardback Non-Fiction pole and Cathy Glass’ A Family Torn Apart (HarperCollins) ending the run of Miriam Margolyes’ This Much is True (John Murray) in the Paperback Non-Fiction top spot. Stanley Tucci’s Taste (Fig Tree) débuted in second place.