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World Book Day: Gotta Catch 'Em All! Bluey remains top but Pokémon isn't far behind
As World Book Day (WBD) edges ever closer, the Official UK Top 10 is made up entirely of the £1 books provided by the charity in exchange for vouchers handed out in schools for the seven days up to Saturday 1st March, according to the latest data from Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
The 12 titles combined to shift 253,255 copies in the last week – up 8.2% against the 234,014 books put through the tills in the same seven-day period in 2024. It takes the total figure for this year so far to 561,474 – up 9.4% against 2024’s figure in the same period. Bluey’s Little Book (Ladybird) remains the most popular with 34,942 young readers opting for the Blue Heeler pup, but the Adventures of Paddington (HarperCollins) drops to third place as Pokemon: The Epic Pocket Guide (Farshore) rises into the second spot with 27,848 copies. It is not possible to see how many copies are redeemed with a voucher and how many are sold for the full £1 asking price but with demographics that transcend all ages, the Pokémon title – along with Lego: Our Amazing Universe (DK Children), this week’s number four – could be enjoying an appeal above and beyond those students with the £1 vouchers.
My Favourite Mistake (Penguin) from Marian Keyes is this week’s Mass Market Fiction number one – and the bestselling non-WBD title of the week – despite sales dropping 12% to 12,820 copies. Keyes’ nearest contender is the latest Jackson Brodie paperback from Kate Atkinson – Death at the Sign of the Rook (Penguin Transworld) which shifted 11,443 copies in its first three days on sale, 455% more than her short story collection Normal Rules Don’t Apply managed in the equivalent period in May 2024. Atkinson isn’t the highest new release this week, though – that honour goes to Poppy O’Toole, whose latest release ends up at 12th in the overall chart and bags the Hardback Non-Fiction (HBNF) number one. Poppy Cooks: The Potato Book (Bloomsbury) sold 11,834 copies – 24.7% more than O’Toole’s previous title, The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cookbook, managed in September of last year.
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There is a newcomer at the summit of the Original Fiction (OF) chart: FairyLoot’s adult title for February, The Scorpion and the Night Blossom (HarperVoyager) by Amelie Wen Zhao. The first book in a new series, Zhao’s latest has sold 10,238 copies – 116.5% more than Zhao’s debut, Song of Silver, Flame Light Night, managed in 2023. Elsewhere, another subscription box favourite, Samantha Shannon, takes third place in the OF chart with a 4,640-copy launch-week return for The Dark Mirror (Bloomsbury), the fifth book of seven planned for the Bone Season series.
The OF chart has clocked up sales of 54,609 units in the last seven days, which is up 30.4% on the previous seven days, thanks in part to a healthy batch of new releases, 12 in total in the top 20.
While new titles are doing well across all the charts, they can’t quite claim a top spot in the Paperback Non-Fiction chart this week. Instead, Gary Stevenson’s The Trading Game (Penguin) retains first place for another week with sales of 7,271 copies – an increase of 6.7% compared to the previous seven days and more than twice as many as second place Formula One 2025 (Welbeck) by Bruce Jones.
In Children’s, the top 12 slots are filled by the WBD tranche, with the biggest non-£1 title being Cozy Cuties, the first book from Coco Wyo published by Random House. It has sold 7,151 copies this week, down 8.4% compared with the previous week.
The total TCM saw a volume rise of 3.5% this week to 3.5 million units, with value sales increasing to £30.3m – up 2.2% compared with the previous seven-day period. However, against the same week in 2024 volume sales are down 3.6% with value slipping 2.4%.
