Monthly E-Ranking: Darker before Midnight

E L James’ Darker rocketed to second place in November’s Monthly E-Book Ranking with just two days’ worth of sales behind it, and despite shifting 10,000 digital units fewer in December, it leapfrogged Lee Child’s The Midnight Line to give James her first e-book number one since summer 2015. Although sales were a little more muted compared to two and half years ago—Darker’s predecessor, Grey, which re-entered the chart in 33rd place, sold a whopping 359,756 e-books in its first month on sale—December is a tricky month for the digital market. Given e-books’ ungiftable format and the fact that book-buyers were channelling all their money into Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients and Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, e-books generally suffer a dampening effect at this time of year, before rebounding back energetically in the final week of the month, when most of the nation is off work and itching to spend the Amazon voucher they just received.

Two of 2017’s biggest-selling débuts, Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt, posted strong sales in December, with the former, the Costa First Novel Award winner, leaping 10 places into fourth; and the latter junior-doctor memoir claiming fifth, climbing from 18th in November. Both titles benefited from book of the year nods: Eleanor Oliphant... was named W H Smith Book of the Year 2017 and This is Going to Hurt won the Books Are My Bag Readers’ Choice Award for 2017. Waterstones’ Book of the Year, Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, declined marginally on its strong November sales, but still spent a third consecutive month in the top 10.

Genevieve Cogman is nothing if not consistent—for the third December running, the newest title in her The Invisible Library series has filed straight into the monthly e-book chart’s top 20, with The Lost Plot just sneaking into the top 10, in ninth place.

Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist, whose BBC TV adaptation was the lynchpin of the channel’s Boxing Day schedule, made a return to the top 50, in 12th place, and Naomi Alderman’s The Power got an eleventh-hour mini-bump, jumping from 47th place in November to 40th. It came after former US president Barack Obama recommended the Baileys Women’s Prize-winning title, naming it among his books of 2017, which were posted on Facebook in the evening (UK time) on 31st December. It gives an idea of how instant e-book sales can be catalysed— especially when a US president (past or present) is involved.

T&Cs Date range: 1st–31st December 2017. Titles with a digital list price of less than £2 are excluded. Participating publishers: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster, Faber Factory, Canongate, Walker Books and Bonnier Zaffre. MNS = months in chart.