In a Pinch: Kay and Kate Allinson take the top spot in the charts

Food blogger superstars Kay and Kate Allinson have pinched the top spot of the UK Top 50 with their latest offering Pinch of Nom All in One (Bluebird), according to data from Nielsen Bookscan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM). 

With an a.s.p. only two pence out from exactly half price, they’ve shifted 28,153 copies in their first three days on sale—significantly down on their June release Pinch of Nom Air Fryer, which sold 58,230 in its first week and 38% down on last winter’s Pinch of Nom Express, albeit that was published two weeks later in the season. But it is the duo’s 37th overall number one since the first Pinch of Now title dropped in 2019, and their 41st time at the Hardback Non-Fiction summit. 

The other key Non-Fiction release this week is Cher—the first part of the diva’s memoir—which makes it to ninth place in the UK Top 50, but isn’t strong enough to take anymore than third place in the Non-Fiction Hardback chart, with sales of 8,770 units.

It’s a Non-Fiction top two, with the Guinness World Records 2025 stepping up 79% week-on-week with 27,209 copies. That’s hardly a record-breaking performance, though, as in the same week last year, the 2024 edition sold just short of 50,000.

Last week’s number one—the Booker Prize winning Orbital (Vintage)—can’t quite manage a second go round at the top, descending to third, but it is one of three titles to break the 25,000-unit barrier and enjoys a 49% boost in sales against the previous seven days.

Although it can’t muster a second week in the overall top spot, Orbital retains its position atop the Mass Market Fiction chart, nearly 7,000 units ahead of second-place Iron Flame (Piatkus) by Rebecca Yarros. The paperback edition of the Fourth Wing sequel has sold 18,988 units in its first week—a number that would have given it the overall number one in the previous chart, but instead Yarros hits fourth place.

It’s a far cry from the paperback release of Fourth Wing in 2023, though, which achieved sales of 57,055 units—three times more than Iron Flame this week. However, Fourth Wing itself has enjoyed a 2,022% increase in sales week-on-week and returns to the Mass Market Fiction top 20 at 15th.

The other big fiction release is Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Harvill Secker)—with sales of 7,953, it hit 13^th place in the overall top 50 and achieved a 52.2% launch-week increase on his last full-length novel—2018’s Killing Commendatore. It’s not enough to take the top spot in the Original Fiction chart, instead having to settle for third place, with Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Viking) not budging from the pole position and Lee and Andrew Child’s In Too Deep (Bantam) entrenched in second.

The latest Wimpy Kid title from Jeff Kinney—Hot Mess (Puffin)—is the highest-ranked children’s title, taking sixth place with sales of 15,247 copies, putting the 19th instalment of the series to lifetime sales of 111,747, 2.5% above his 2023 performance in the same period.

There are eight independently published titles in the Non-Fiction Paperback top 20, half of which comes from artistic collective Coco Wyo—but it’s Vivi Tinta’s Fuzzy Hygge that takes the top spot with sales of 5,812 copies, the first time an independently published title has reached the summit of the Non-Fiction paperback chart since records began.

Continuing the patterns of previous weeks, the TCM has increased its sales against last week with volume up 9.7% to 4.5 million and value up 10.9% to £43.7m—the first time it’s topped £40m in 2024—but both are significantly down on last year, with volume down 12.3% and value down 12.8%.