Weekly E-Book Ranking: Darker casts shadow over chart

E L James’ Darker topped the Weekly E-Book Ranking for the week leading up to Christmas. The second title in the author’s series reimagining her blockbuster Fifty Shades set through the eyes of troubled lothario Christian Grey may have fallen flat in print—shifting 205,121 copies in five weeks would be impressive by any other standard, but its predecessor Grey sold nearly 900,000 copies in the same period in summer of 2015—but its digital edition has managed to hang on to the weekly digital top spot.

While the print market feasted, e-books were in famine. The print market’s value hit £86.7m for the week ending 23rd December, the highest for any single week since 2007, but the ungiftable e-book format makes the digital charts far quieter in the festive period. However, everything swaps around in the last week of December, when most of the nation is doing nothing but lying on the sofa with a tub of Quality Street.

Coupled with the snowfall that much of the UK experienced in the post-Christmas period, it’s likely that many book-buyers opted to stay indoors and download something onto their Kindles rather than face a sodden high street. As a result, in the face of print’s 68.5% drop in sales week on week this week, e-books will probably have bounced back.

Lisa Jewell’s Then She Was Gone is the highest-charting of the latest Richard & Judy Book Club batch in e-book format, though Jo Nesbo’s The Thirst may well leapfrog it, as the novel did in this week’s print charts. Though technically a W H Smith print promotion, the book club titles have typically performed well digitally too. Another of its finds, Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, was named the W H Smith Book of the Year in 2017 and has spent 28 weeks in the ranking to date. With its announcement as the Costa First Novel Award winner this week, could it finally grasp that elusive number one?

The top 20 was dominated by big 2017 titles, including Books Are My Bag Readers’ Choice winner Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt, former e-book number ones Dan Brown’s Origin and Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, as well as George Saunder’s Man Booker Prize-winner Lincoln in the Bardo. A few e-book buyers also got in on the action before Boxing Day: Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist hit 15th place, ahead of its adaptation’s airing on BBC1 on the 26th.

Data is for week ending 23rd December 2017. 
T&Cs: Titles with a selling price below £2 are excluded, as are titles priced £4.50 or below with any print versions priced above £17.99. Participating publishers: PRH UK, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster and Bonnier. WKS = the number of weeks in chart. DLP = digital list price.