Bad Dad motors into number one spot as Walliams' fastest seller

David Walliams’ Bad Dad (HarperCollins Children's) has screeched into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 92,667 copies for £559,227. The newest title’s sales straight out of the gate are only 230 copies short of 2016 Christmas Number One The Midnight Gang’s highest weekly volume. And that book spent seven weeks in the top spot, and has sold over 760,000 copies to date.

Before 2017, every new Walliams title set a new record in its opening week. However, World Book Day title Blob shifted 18,864 copies before World Book Day itself, ruining the perfect upward curve somewhat—but it made up for it the next week by selling 103,571 copies and achieving the comedian-turned-author’s biggest-selling single week to date. However, given that Walliams titles tend to rocket in volume in their second week on sale—The Midnight Gang leapt 32% in November 2016—Bad Dad could easily top that.

Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage (PRH and David Fickling) became the fastest-selling Children’s title since Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) in mid-October: Walliams has now leapfrogged him. However, the fastest-selling title of the year is still Dan Brown’s Origin (Bantam), which sold 7,428 copies more than Bad Dad in its first week—albeit it was published on a Tuesday, two days earlier than Walliams' hit.

Walliams claimed the Children's number one for his 101st week, while magician Dynamo knocked Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens off the Paperback Non-Fiction number one with his The Book of Secrets (Blink).

Aside from that, all category number ones stayed the same, and for a fourth week all number one authors were male. David Baldacci’s The Fix (Pan) came the closest to challenging Peter James’ Need You Dead (Pan) in the Mass Market Fiction chart, which reigned as number one for a third week.

In contrast, both Origin, in the Original Fiction number one, and Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients (Michael Joseph), in the Hardback Non-Fiction top spot, were more than 10,000 copies clear at the top. 5 Ingredients has now spent eleven weeks atop the chart, and is now staring down the barrel at half a million copies sold. Nigella Lawson’s At My Table (Chatto & Windus) got a boost as its companion BBC TV series started, jumping 121% in volume week on week (and back into the Top 50).

With seven weeks to go until 25th December, Pret’s Christmas sandwich on the shelves and the temperature dropping, the chart was looking unashamedly festive last week. Dilly Court’s The Mistletoe Seller (Harper) was the highest-charting Christmas-themed title in the Mass Market Fiction top 20 (out of five) while Tom Fletcher’s The Christmasaurus paperback (Puffin) was the second highest new entry in the Children’s chart, with Jacqueline Wilson’s Hetty Feather’s Christmas (Doubleday Children's) and Mike Brownlow and Simon Rickerty’s Ten little Elves (Orchard) also jingling all the way up.

The print market's weekly volume hit its highest level since World Book Day week, at 3.7 million books sold. However, year on year, volume was down 5.4%. For 2017 to date, value is still just a shade ahead of 2016, with an extra £7.3m earned, a 0.6% bump.