Hat trick for The Testaments as Sansom soars

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (Vintage) has spent a third week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 23,078 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale has now shifted over 160,000 copies in just over three weeks, making it one of the top 20 bestselling titles of the year to date.

Jamie Oliver’s Veg (Michael Joseph) bounced upwards by 4% week on week, selling 21,321 copies and reclaiming its Hardback Non-Fiction number one from David Cameron’s For the Record (WilliamCollins). The former Prime Minister’s memoir trotted down the Top 50, sliding from second place overall to ninth in its first full week on sale, a drop of 60% in volume week on week to 8,371 copies sold. 

C J Sansom’s Tombland (Pan) leapfrogged Adele Parks’ Lies Lies Lies (HQ) to swipe the Mass Market Fiction number one—the author’s first since Lamentation in 2015. Tombland, the seventh title in Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series, jumped 29% in its first full week on sale. In hardback, the title spent three weeks in the Original Fiction number one in autumn 2018. 

Stacey Halls' The Familiars (Zaffre) whisked into the top 10 in its first week on sale in paperback, and became the biggest-selling of the latest Richard and Judy Book Club tranche. With its hardback the second-biggest fiction debut in the format of the year to date, the paperback has got off to an equally magical start, as the highest new entry in the Mass Market Fiction top 20.

Greta Thunberg’s No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (Penguin) rocketed 66% in volume week on week, hitting 10,592 copies and swiping the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for the first time. This was a stunning improvement on what were already-stellar sales for the 16-year-old’s title the previous week, which saw Global Climate Strike protests took place across the world. Last week, however, Thunberg delivered an eviscerating speech to the UN and managed to provoke the ire of Donald Trump—and as we’ve learned from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury (Little, Brown) and Michelle Obama’s Becoming (Viking), UK bookbuyers are guaranteed to send any book that enrages the US President flying up the charts. 

Aladdin: Book of the Film (Centum) debuted in fourth place overall to claim the Children’s number one, a week before Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth (David Fickling Books/PRH UK) inevitably tops the chart. Rick Riordan’s The Tyrant’s Tomb (Puffin) also entered the kids’ chart, swiping sixth overall. 

A week ahead of Super Thursday, the print market jumped 7% in value week on week to its highest value of the year to date, at £31.95m. Average selling price spiked to £9.58, the second-highest weekly a.s.p. on record, with only the week of Super Thursday 2018 topping it at £9.66.