The Fast 800 feasts for second week in charts top spot

Michael Mosley’s The Fast 800 (Short) has claimed a second week as the UK Official Top 50 number one—though only just. At 17,373 copies sold through the Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market, The Fast 800 has shifted the lowest volume for a number one in nearly two years—and beat Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start (Absolute) by barely 400 copies.

While Kerridge may not be seeing the same stunning sales he did in January—Lose Weight for Good even prevented Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury (Little, Brown) from a record-breaking number one spot early last year—Fresh Start is performing solidly. Despite not yet clinching the overall number one spot, it is currently the bestselling title of 2019, nearly 6,000 copies ahead of The Fast 800. This is in spite of the two diet books’ wildly different approaches: The Fast 800 allows followers just 800 calories a day, while recipes for a single meal in the more holistic Fresh Start can top 700 calories. Let’s hope no one’s buying both to use together.

Kerridge’s Lose Weight for Good, the bestselling cookbook of 2018, is also boomeranging back up the charts, returning to the Top 50 with its volume 134% up week on week.

Heather Morris held the Mass Market Fiction number one with The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) for a 15th non-consecutive week, but the highest new entry in the chart was John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin), first published in 1980, 11 years after the author’s death. The 2000 edition rose 363% week on week to 5,301 copies sold—having never shifted more than 350 per week before 2019. While the title’s meteoric rise last week may seem like a knee-jerk reaction to current Westminster politics by the British bookbuying public, Billy Connolly’s recent recommendation may instead be responsible. After the comedian called it his “favourite book of all time”, Aberdeen Central Library experienced unprecedented demand for the title, and Connolly’s own Made in Scotland (BBC) zipped back up into the Hardback Non-Fiction top 20, jumping 22% week on week.

Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Faber) held the Original Fiction number one for a fourth week, with the highest new entry John Lanchester’s The Wall (Faber), in fifth place—with the author’s highest hardback volume since Capital in 2013.

Craig Smith and Katz Cowley’s The Wonky Donkey (Scholastic) held the overall Children’s number one for a second week—putting 2019, after three weeks, on the same amount of Picture Book number ones in the chart as both 2018 and 2017. Karen McManus, author of the bestselling YA title of 2018, One of Us is Lying (Penguin), made her debut in the Top 50 with her follow-up, Two Can Keep a Secret.

The print market posted its lowest volume since the end of June 2018, dropping below three million books sold to 2.991 million, but value maintained a relatively healthy £26.57m—0.8% up on the same week last year. Average selling price continues to remain eye-watering, at £8.88 for last week.