Mantel maintains top spot as print market hangs on

Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light (Fourth Estate) has held the UK Official Top 50 number one spot for a third week running, selling 30,280 copies through Nielsen BookScan's TCM. With its average selling price reaching £17.37, it is now the highest-priced number one title of all time, surpassing the £17.10 a.s.p of Michelle Obama's Becoming (Viking) the week of Christmas 2018.

The print market made gains on the previous week, with a 5.8% improvement in volume to 3.37 million books sold and a 2.9% jump in value to £26.45m. However, up against a particularly strong week in 2019, it fell 9% in value year on year and 4.4% in volume. With UK bookbuyers's focus possibly on paperback fiction, in anticipation of a lockdown, rather than spendier Mother's Day gifts, value suffered. While Adult Fiction was up a stunning 32% in volume and 40% in value year-on-year, and a study guide-boosted Children's sector up 11.5% in volume and 17% in value, Adult Non-Fiction plummeted 38% in volume and 37% in value.

Fiction rushed in to fill the space vacated by the World Book Day 2020 tranche, which dropped almost completely out of the top 10—only Robin Stevens' The Case of the Drowned Pearl (Puffin) hung on, also swiping the Children's number one. Aside from the World Book Day title and Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury), which rose to second place, fiction dominated, with David Baldacci's One Good Deed (Pan) leapfrogging Dilly Court's A Village Scandal (HarperCollins) for the Mass Market Fiction top spot.

The Mirror and the Light's run atop the Original Fiction chart continued, with four of the top five bestselling titles part of the Cromwell trilogy. Only Marian Keyes' Grown Ups (Michael Joseph) broke up the Mantel monopoly, scoring second place.

Mackesy's Waterstones Book of the Year 2019 once again held the Hardback Non-Fiction number one, improving in sales week on week—it has previously proven to rise in volume during weeks the UK public may be feeling mentally fragile. Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women (Vintage) was the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a third week, with Amanda Owen's Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess (Pan) the highest new entry in fourth place.

Pandemic lit also stretched its legs—Dean Koontz's originally 1981-published The Eyes of Darkness (Headline), a huge e-book bestseller, zipped up into 65th place in paperback, while Albert Camus' 2004 edition of The Plague (Penguin) debuted in the Fiction Heatseekers top 20.

The Children's chart may have been locked down by World Book Day titles still, but primary school-level study guides were flying off the shelves, with four Collins guides in the Children's overall top 20. Of the top 15 Children's Non-Fiction books, 14 were study guides—and all from Collins.