Weekly E-Ranking: The Honeyman isn't over

Gail Honeyman has scored a double: in the same week that Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine ascended to the print number one spot, the e-book edition of the title ousted Jojo Moyes’ Still Me from the Weekly E-Book Ranking top spot. In 2016, Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train knocked Still Me’s predecessor, After You, from the summit, and the psychological thriller went on to spend 54 weeks in the top 20, 19 of them at number one. If Eleanor Oliphant... can hang around the digital ranking until the end of June, it’ll topple that record and become the longest-charting e-book in the weekly ranking’s history.

Simultaneous print and e-book number ones are not as common as you might think, considering the scarcity of non-fiction and kids’ titles in the digital charts, and the tendency of e-books to sell more when their hardback (usually the lower-selling print edition) is the only paper alternative. Having said that, the last three titles to reign in both "e" and "p" were non-fiction (Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, in early January), a paperback fiction title (E L James’ Darker, in December) and a children’s book (Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage in October). But these were big "event" titles, two of which were hardbacks and the third a paperback original. In fact, as Eleanor Oliphant... hit the e-book number one a week before its paperback release, it could claim to be just the second title to top the weekly ranking as a hardback and as a paperback—Lee Child’s Night School was the first title to do so.

Chalked up
Though the top two remained the same from last week’s list, several new entries rushed into the top 10. Elly Griffiths’ The Dark Angel went straight into third place. The crime author’s last Dr Ruth Galloway mystery, The Chalk Pit, reached a high of fourth in the e-book chart, and has gone to be Griffiths’ bestselling paperback to date. Rather like Mick Herron—who saw his new Jackson Lamb title London Rules fall out of the ranking, only for Slow Horses, the first in the series, to make a return—2018 might just be Griffiths’ breakthrough year. Chris Carter and Sophie Kinsella’s latest efforts filled out the rest of the top five, with Carter’s Gallery of the Dead beating Kinsella’s Surprise Me to fourth place— the reverse of their placements in the Original Fiction chart in the same week.