Non-Fiction: Oliver's One heads up a wave of cookbooks into the chart

One by Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph) leap-frogged Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart (Sphere) to swipe the Official UK Top 50 number one spot, selling 30,946 copies in its first full week on sale. Though One’s launch week was higher than both 2010’s 30-Minute Meals and 2017’s 5 Ingredients, Oliver’s two biggest-selling titles, the one-pot cookbook’s volume fell 49% week on week, while both the latter two grew in sales in their second week in the chart. This isn’t necessarily a sign that One will fall short of the million-copy total all of his numerically-titled cookbooks have achieved so far, especially with an energy-saving Christmas looming, but it’s definitely an indicator of how the pre-order game has sharpened in the past five years.

One led a cohort of back-to-basics cookery books in the Hardback Non-fiction chart, with Mary Berry’s Cook and Share (BBC) and Tom Kerridge’s Real Life Recipes (Bloomsbury) rising into the top four, and Nadiya Hussain’s Everyday Bakes (Michael Joseph) and Sabrina Ghayour’s Persiana Everyday (Aster) charting 11th and 17th respectively.

Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman (Hodder) and Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful’s A Visible Man (Bloomsbury) made their débuts in the chart’s top half, as Katy Hessel’s A Story of Art Without Men (Hutchinson Heinemann) and Joe Tracini’s memoir Ten Things I Hate About Me (Trapeze) also entered.

The print market climbed another 1% in volume and 1.4% in value against the previous week’s soaring sales, to 3.82 million books sold for £33.4m. This was once again the second-biggest week of the year in both volume and value, with the first week of January still just ahead. With a new Richard Osman hovering on the horizon, that record is likely to be broken by next week. 

The death of the Queen, announced on Thursday (8th September) evening, saw Robert Hardman’s recently published biography Queen of Our Times (Macmillan) rise by 1,386% week on week in volume and return to 12th in the Hardback Non-fiction chart, notching up its second-highest weekly volume. Viewership of Netflix’s “The Crown” has reportedly jumped by 800% in the UK over the past week. 

Cathy Glass’ A Family Torn Apart (HarperCollins) remained firm atop Paperback Non-fiction for a second week, as Stanley Tucci’s Taste (Fig Tree) scored the runner-up spot once again.