E L James' Darker casts a shadow over the chart

E L James’ Darker (Arrow) has shackled the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 85,532 copies for £346,838, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market.

Despite landing the top spot, James' latest has sold almost exactly 300,000 copies fewer than its predecessor Grey, which shifted 385,972 copies in its first week on sale in June 2015. Since that summer of 2012, when the Fifty Shades of Grey series sold over 10 million copies and spent a combined 22 weeks in the number one spot, the public’s passion for the series seems to be waning. Grey’s enormous 1.1 million-copy total volume was not quite a quarter of the even more enormous 4.7 million Fifty Shades of Grey shifted, and the Fifty Shades Darker film tie-in, released earlier this year, sold fewer than half what the Fifty Shades of Grey tie-in did in 2015.

James’ self-publishing background means her digital sales account for a larger piece of the pie than for many other authors— the e-book of Grey’s shifted 668,323 units in its first month on sale in 2015.

However, Darker still becomes the fastest-selling Mass Market Fiction title since Grey, beating Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) in May 2016. And James becomes the first female author to top the chart since Victoria Hislop’s Cartes Postales from Greece (Headline), nearly four months ago, and the first female number one in any category chart since Rupi Kaur’s The Sun and Her Flowers (S&S) topped the Paperback Non-Fiction chart in the first week of October.

David Walliams’ Bad Dad (HarperCollins) may have been denied a fifth week in the top spot, but it declined a scant 3,000 copies on the week before. With 75,941 copies sold last week, the title breezed past the 400,000-copies-sold mark, putting it in second place overall for the year, with just Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients (Michael Joseph) to beat.

Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage (PRH/David Fickling) leapt 30% in volume week on week, following its announcement as Waterstones Book of the Year, and spent a seventh week running in the overall top 10.

Other Christmas crackers included Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Particular), which rocketed 77% in volume to 15,830 copies sold and hit 11th place; Richard Osman's The World Cup of Everything (Coronet) and Mary Beard’s Women & Power (Profile), both which entered the Top 50 for the first time; and Sinclair McKay’s Bletchley Park Brainteasers (Headline), which held the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a second week and increased in volume by 35%.

Meanwhile Dan Brown’s Origin (Bantam) boomeranged back into the Original Fiction number one, displacing Transworld stablemate Lee Child and The Midnight Line. The fifth Robert Langdon title jumped in volume by 24% week on week.

The print market bounced up 18.8% in volume and 19% in value week on week, to 6.1 million books sold for £52m. However, compared to the same week a year ago, volume was down 4.8% and value trailed by 1.9%.