Brown retains the crown as Origin surges

Dan Brown’s Origin (Corgi) has leapt 41% in volume in its second week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 54,704 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market.

The paperback of Origin, securing the author’s 78th week atop the overall chart, is currently selling 3% faster than the 2014 paperback of Inferno. It also posted the biggest single week for an Adult Fiction title in 2018 to date—in fact, no Mass Market Fiction title except E L James’ Darker (Arrow) in the last week of November 2017 has posted a higher one-week volume in the last two years.

Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) bounced up 7% week on week to 15,725 copies sold—its fourth highest weekly volume to date, and its biggest since early May. It also claimed the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a 13th week, outpacing Pan Macmillan stablemate Joe Wicks and The Fat-Loss Plan (Bluebird) for longest-running number one in the category for the year to date. All in all, a Pan Mac title has now held the top spot for 23 weeks of 2018.

Dilly Court’s The Summer Maiden (HarperCollins) rose into fourth place, increasing in volume 10% on its first three days on sale, while Milly Johnson’s The Perfectly Imperfect Woman jumped into sixth, rocketing 55% in volume. New fiction entries included Alison Pearson’s How Hard Can it Be? (The Borough Press) in 23rd place and the current Small Publishers chart number one, Tony Kent’s Killer Intent (Elliott & Thompson)—which debuted in the Top 50 in 30th.

Nadiya Hussain’s Nadiya’s Family Favourites (Michael Joseph) vaulted from 19th place to third in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart, and also hit the Top 50 for the first time, as the companion BBC TV series began. The Great British Bake Off winner’s Nadiya’s British Food Adventure spent five weeks in the category top spot across summer 2017. However, Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet (Canongate) is looking immovable in the Hardback Non-Fiction number one spot—inching up by 163 copies week on week last week. So far, its three-week run has posted remarkably consistent weekly volumes, with the title yet to drop below 6,000 units sold.

The Harry Potter Box Set: Complete Collection (Bloomsbury) was the only new entry in Children’s, after featuring as part as Amazon’s Prime Day deals. The seven-book collection jumped 640% in volume to chart fourth in the Children’s and YA Fiction chart. The print market, at 3.46 million books sold for £27.8m, had its best week since early March, when Mother's Day gift-buying and Beast From the East-delayed World Book Day sales boosted weekly volume and value to among their highest ever outside of November-December. Value also jumped 3% against the same week in 2017, the first year-on-year rise since mid-June.