Non-fiction: Pinch propelled to summit on pre-orders
Kay and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom: Enjoy (Bluebird) has soared into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot, selling 73,178 copies. Notching up the food-bloggers-turned-cookbook-blockbusters’ 22nd week in the overall top spot, Enjoy was considerably down on previous Pinch of Nom titles.
Back in spring 2019, the original cookbook became the fastest- selling non-fiction book of all time upon release, with 210,506 copies sold in its first week. The following three December-released titles, Everyday Light, Quick & Easy and Comfort Food, all shifted more than 119,000 units in their launch weeks—with Comfort Food going on to claim the 2021 Christmas Number One a week later. With cash-strapped book-buyers feeling a different kind of pinch, perhaps a slimming cookbook is just lower down on the list of necessities than usual. And yet, even with Enjoy trailing its predecessor by 45,000 copies, it is still the biggest weekly sale for a non-fiction number one this year, by some way—and only Comfort Food, top in January, comes anywhere close.
Despite the Pinch of Nom cookbooks’ traditionally bolshy first-week sales, padded out with months’ worth of pre-orders, sales do tend to drop dramatically the week after, before powering up again during the post-Boxing Day repentance period. With Enjoy’s lower-than-usual sales, its expected pre-Christmas plummet may take it out of the running for the Christmas Number One altogether, blowing the race wide open. Three previous festive top spot-holders—Richard Osman, Guinness World Records and Jamie Oliver—assembled in last week’s top four, each shifting within 5,171 copies of one another.
Guinness World Records 2023 (GWR) spent the previous three weeks in the overall top spot, but it may have peaked too soon, with its volume falling 3% week on week as Enjoy knocked it from the number one. The momentum is truly with Oliver’s One (Michael Joseph), which bounded up 108% in volume against the week before to its highest weekly sales since its launch. But surely Osman’s The Bullet that Missed (Viking) is the favourite to leapfrog Pinch of Nom and claim next week’s festive pole—and it could surpass half a million copies sold to date in the same fell swoop.
The true dark horse could be Gyles Brandreth’s Elizabeth (Michael Joseph), which débuted last week in fifth place, selling 27,938 copies. The biography of the late Queen has no doubt been gathering pre-order sales since its announcement in early October, but could now be perfectly poised as a last-minute gift for your grandma.
