Weekly E-Ranking: MacBride takes Martin’s crown

Stuart MacBride's All That’s Dead stormed straight into the Weekly E-Book Ranking number one, displacing HarperCollins stablemate George R R Martin’s A Game of Thrones—and making it a Tartan Noir double for the print and e-book charts. Though it is MacBride’s fifth successive title to go straight into the e-book top 20, it’s his first ever number one. His previous high-water mark was fourth, achieved by both 2017’s A Dark So Deadly and 2018’s The Blood Road.

Interestingly, the hardback edition of All That’s Dead entered the Original Fiction in second place in the same week this chart covers, as runner-up to Victoria Hislop’s Those Who Are Loved—which charted third in the digital ranking. Perhaps MacBride, regularly published twice a year, is simply more prolific than Hislop—who last hit the Original Fiction chart in 2016—and fans of his Inspector Logan McRae series are running low on physical shelf space.

Lindsay Kelk’s I Heart Hawaii also débuted strongly, racking up the author’s highest ranking to date: second place. Perhaps the dreary Bank Holiday weekend weather inspired some escapist book-buying. Crime fiction—which always tends to perform strongly, but does particularly well during the summer months—ramped up a level, with nine crime titles in the chart.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens fired straight into fourth place, off the back of its Amazon Prime adaptation. The instant-buy nature of the e-book makes it the perfect place for film and TV tie-ins to flourish, just as it also acts a form of tribute after an author’s death—for example, the late Judith Kerr’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit charting a week ago. However, online streaming services have tended to have a greater effect on print sales, with Netflix successes such as Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why, Caroline Kepnes’ You and Joseph Malerman’s Bird Box all faring better in physical formats. Perhaps Amazon Prime will prove an exception, though: previous Gaiman adaptation American Gods notched up seven weeks in the e-book chart across the summer of 2017.