Guinness settles into the top spot as race for Christmas number one begins

In what might be a bit of a worry for booksellers and publishers as we head into the final seven days of trading before Christmas, the top 10 books in Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) dropped 5% in volume week-on-week in the latest charts, with Guinness World Records 2025 returning to the top spot – selling just under 40,000 copies. 

It is not entirely bad news, though – the same top 10 has risen 2.4% in terms of actual cash through the tills as the average selling price jumped from £9.85 to £10.60. This change in ASP is thanks in part to the absence of last week’s number one – Nathan Anthony’s Bored of Lunch Six Ingredient Slow Cooker (Ebury Press) – which has dropped from first to 16th with a 74% decline in sales.

The titles at the top of the Original Fiction chart are having a positive impact on sales in the overall top 10 as Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Viking) leads the charge with a 20.7% increase in volume week-on-week, putting it in second place in the top 50.

Elsewhere in the Original Fiction chart, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter (Fourth Estate) rises two places to fourth and breaks the 20,000-unit barrier with a massive 34.1% more books through the tills – perhaps mostly through Waterstones thanks to their Book of the Year promotion.

Sandwiched between Butter and We Solve Murders is the 2024 Booker Prize winner – Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage) – with her sales also leaping 34.1% to 26,542 copies, delivering the biggest single week performance for the title.

All eyes are on these four books as the reveal of the 2024 Christmas number one is just seven days away – the gap between Richard Osman and Guinness is less than 2,000 copies, while all things being equal Orbital will overtake them both – but perhaps it is the The 1% Club (Bantam) that we should be paying attention to as it rockets up from 10th to fifth place with a 76.7% rise in sales.

It is the third week in a row at the top of the Paperback Non-Fiction chart for the quiz book as it shifts 12,000 more copies than second place Murdle (Souvenir). GT Karber’s crime themed puzzles were easily 2023’s Christmas number one with sales of 77,561 units; all of this year’s contenders will have to have an impressive rise in sales week-on-week to match that.

Back to this week, though, and the rest of the top 10 is made up of some familiar titles – the Private Eye Annual takes sixth and like the majority of the top 50 sees a week-on-week increase in volume.

One title to buck that trend is the Children’s number one Big Jim Begins (Scholastic) the latest in the Dog Man series from Dav Pilkey. As might be expected in the second week following its release, sales have dropped 43% to 19,920 copies – a performance that sees it still remain in the overall top 10 and stay just ahead of Jeff Kinney’s Hot Mess (Puffin) – which sees a modest 5.1% growth in sales, but a drop of one position in the latest ranking from seventh to eighth.

Jamie Oliver’s Simply Jamie (Michael Joseph) and Lee and Andrew Child’s In Too Deep (Bantam) round off a good week for Penguin Random House which sees them take six slots in the top 10 across various imprints.

As to be expected at this time of year, there are few new releases, with this week’s highest new entry into the TCM being Makana Yamamoto’s Hammajang Luck (Gollancz) – though its inclusion in Illumicrate’s December subscription box is not enough for it to break into the top 100, stalling at position 111.

The TCM saw a 14.5% rise in volume last week taking total number of books sold 7.7 million books and a rise of 16.3% in value, bringing in £77m. For the first time this year the average selling price rises above the £10 mark to £10.06. Compared with 2023, though, volume is down 3.4% while value has seen a decline of 3.8%.