Bluey leads the way as World Book Day books take on the charts

A slew of new releases has completely changed this week’s official Top 50 with more than half of the bestseller list being occupied by titles first published on the 13th February. Nowhere is this takeover more dominant than in the Top 10 itself, with nine out of the 10 slots a new entry – led by Bluey’s Little Book (Ladybird), one of this year’s World Book Day (WBD) titles.

The titular Blue Heeler pup saw 24,918 copies of her £1 WBD title pass through the tills last week according to data from Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM). It is one of five WBD titles in the Top 10 – with 10 in the overall top 50. It’s a strong start for WBD with this year’s collection of 12 titles seeing 124,427 copies exchanged for vouchers in bookshops across the country – that’s up 41.6% compared with the first week of 2024, but that could be due to the phasing of half-term which is a week later in many places this year, meaning that vouchers were given out seven days earlier.

In total, 1.2 million £1 books were handed out during the eight weeks of the campaign in 2024, with a third of those accounted for during the week of World Book Day – which falls on Thursday, 7th March this year. The £1 books are part of a charitable event, supported by publishers and booksellers. According to WBD, in 2024, 1 in 4 children receiving free school meals, and 1 in 5 other children, said the £1 book was the first they’d had of their own.

It is a children’s top five this week with the highest new non-WBD release coming from Sasha Peyton Smith – The Rose Bargain (Electric Monkey) has sold 13,379 copies this week, taking it to fourth place.

Kristin Hannah’s The Women (Pan) debuts in sixth place this week – the highest appearance for an adult title in the latest rankings – with sales of 12,250 units. It’s been three years Hannah’s previous novel was released, but that wait has only grown anticipation with sales of this paperback selling nearly 10,000 more launch-week copies than 2022’s The Four Winds.

Hannah appears just ahead of Marian Keyes’ My Favourite Mistake (Penguin) which experiences an increase of 18.3% compared to Keyes’ last paperback – Again, Rachel which was published in April 2023.

There is a barrage of new releases in the Original Fiction Top 20 with Jojo Moyes taking the top spot with We All Live Here (Michael Joseph) and knocking Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm down to second place. Moyes sold 9,732 copies – a 3.4% volume increase compared to 2023’s Someone Else’s Shoes but a 12.8% increase when it comes to actual money spent thanks to nearly an extra pound on the average selling price, despite the RRP remaining at £22.

Last week’s number one – Jamie Oliver’s Easy Air Fryer (Michael Joseph) – drops 10 places to 11th with a 50.5% decline in sales and also loses its Hardback Non-Fiction crown as Becky Excell’s Budget Gluten Free (Quadrille) which manages to sell 10,882 copies, just 606 more than Oliver, and 25.4% fewer than Excell’s Gluten Free Air Fryer managed in its first week in June 2024.

The only title not to trade places from the top of its respective chart is – ironically – The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson which sticks around at the top of the Paperback Non-Fiction chart for the third week in a row. The biggest new release here is Maggie Hartley’s Please Help My Mummy (Seven Dials) which claims the 18th slot on the NFPB chart with 1,520 copies.

Volume sales were up 8.7% week-on-week to 3.4 million books sold, with value sales rising 6.4% to £30.9m. These numbers cannot quite match up to the same week in 2024, though, with volume down 2.9% and value dropping 0.5%.