Weekly E-Ranking: Kay makes hay as record nears

Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt has bagged the Weekly E-Book Ranking number one for a second consecutive week, its 17th in total. The junior doctor memoir, first released in September 2017, is still cruising nearly two years on—its paperback is yet to sell fewer than 5,000 copies per week, and for the same week as this chart, that print edition jumped 8% in volume week on week.

This is Going to Hurt has racked up the most number ones of any non-fiction title in the E-Book Ranking’s history, with Michael Wolff’s Donald Trump exposé Fire and Fury its nearest competitor on, er, two weeks. But could Kay take the biggest prize of all, and become the ranking’s most prolific chart-topper? Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine are tied for the record on 19 weeks, so Kay is in prime position to make a surgical strike and topple both titles, with just three weeks left to go.

In a flashback to 2018, Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz joined This is Going to Hurt at the top of the chart. The two titles, plus the now-discounted Eleanor Oliphant... spent much of last year exchanging the e-book number one between them. The Tattooist, which spent 11 weeks of spring and early summer 2018 trailing only Eleanor Oliphant, has now finished in second place behind Kay’s title eight times. Between the Honeyman and Kay eras, it also managed to squeeze in 12 weeks at number one itself.

Kate Atkinson’s former number one Big Sky was joined by another, very different Atkinson—"Hollyoaks" star-turned-fitness guru Gemma Atkinson’s The Ultimate Body Plan charted fourth. Kerry Barnes’ gangland thriller The Choice also hit the top five in its first week. The author’s Deceit and The Rules have both previously charted, though The Choice has scored her highest ranking yet.

Is the "ordinary people" memoir the 2019 holiday read of choice? Not only is Kay seemingly unstoppable, this chart saw Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path and The Secret Barrister rise, as Laura Cumming’s memoir On Chapel Sands débuted in 12th.

Week ending 6th July 2019. 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, Bonnier Zaffre & Canongate.