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Mrs Hinch cleans the floor with competition to hit number one
Instagram sensation Mrs Hinch’s Hinch Yourself Happy (Michael Joseph) has sold 160,302 copies in its first week on sale to sweep straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market.
Three weeks ago Sophie Hinchcliffe's cleaning guide-slash-memoir would have unquestionably become the fastest-selling non-fiction title of all time, but we’re living in a post-Pinch of Nom world, and Hinch Yourself Happy fell short of the slimming cookbook’s first week sales by just over 50,000 units. However Hinch Yourself Happy is still the second fastest-selling non-fiction title ever, beating fellow autobiographies Alex Ferguson’s My Autobiography (Hodder) and Michelle Obama’s Becoming (Viking) for single-week sales.
After just three days on sale, Hinch Yourself Happy is the fifth-bestselling title in the House & Home category since records began, barely 200 units off the total sales for Aggie McKenzie and Kim Woodburn's How Clean is Your House? (Penguin) in paperback.
In a world where Instagram doesn’t exist, Lee Child’s Past Tense (Bantam) has just notched up his 21st overall number one. No doubt the veteran author is cursing Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger today. However, Past Tense scored third in the Top 50, below Hinch Yourself Happy and Pinch of Nom, and marks Child’s 32nd week at Mass Market Fiction number one—racking up the author’s best ever first week paperback sales of 42,281 copies. It beat the launch week volume of 2007’s The Hard Way by just 18 units.
Lucinda Riley’s The Moon Sister (Pan) and Madeline Miller’s Circe (Bloomsbury) also thundered into the Mass Market Fiction chart, swiping third and sixth place respectively.
Wilbur Smith and Imogen Robertson’s King of Kings (Zaffre) reigned in the Original Fiction top 20, selling 5,917 copies in its launch week. Fellow new entries Philip Kerr’s Metropolis (Quercus) and Joanne Harris’ The Strawberry Thief (Orion) followed in its wake, charting second and third.
Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) leapfrogged Ant Middleton’s First Man In (HarperCollins) for the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, claiming its 38th week in the top spot. Kay's Picador stablemate The Secret Barrister, a runaway hit in hardback, entered the chart in third place, shifting 7,965 copies in its first week.
As the World Book Day titles fade from the charts, Onjali Q Rauf’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize The Boy at the Back of the Class (Orion Children's) bounced upwards to third place overall, with 5,977 copies sold last week, while David Walliams’ Fing (HarperCollins) still rules all. Easter-related titles experienced a resurrection in sales, with We’re Going on an Egg Hunt (Bloomsbury Children's), Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells’ That’s Not My Chick (Usborne), and Martha Mumford and Laura Hughes’ Hop Little Bunnies (Bloomsbury Children's) rolling all the way into the Top 50.
The print market held steady on the week before, rising 0.4% in value to £28.7m against a fall of 0.9% in volume, to 3.4 million books sold. However, it truly blew out the cobwebs compared to last year—posting a 15% rise in value and a 12.5% in volume.
