Jamie Oliver scores hat-trick as Veg sales grow

Jamie Oliver’s Veg (Michael Joseph) has continued to prove fruitful in its third week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, with its volume through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM rising 22.5% week on week to 37,951 copies sold. Boosted by the start of Oliver’s Channel 4 tie-in TV series last week, Veg is now closing in on 100,000 copies sold in just two and a half weeks, and is already threatening to knock Joe Wicks’ Veggie Lean in 15 (Bluebird) off the Vegetarian Cookery chart for 2019.

The Marvel Studios Character Guide (DK Children's) was the highest new entry, assisted by a Sainsbury’s buy-the-DVD-get-a-book-free deal to tie in with the release of "Avengers: Endgame" on DVD and Blu-ray. Charting second overall, it also swiped the Children’s Non-Fiction number one.

Ant Middleton’s The Fear Bubble (HarperCollins) sold 16,144 copies in its launch week to swipe third place overall, the “SAS: Who Dares Wins” presenter’s highest ranking to date. The Fear Bubble also notched up his second-biggest single week of sales, in just three days on the shelves. Middleton’s debut First Man In has sold almost 450,000 copies across all editions.

Robert Harris’ The Second Sleep (Hutchinson) topped the Original Fiction chart in its first three days on sale, shifting 10,950 copies. The chart was chockablock with new entries, with Jeffrey Archer’s Nothing Ventured (Macmillan) scoring second, Wilbur Smith & Tom Harper’s Ghost Fire (Zaffre) hitting third and Ann Cleeves’ The Long Call (Macmillan) charting fifth.

Just ahead of the biggest fiction launch of the year thundering into the charts, Bridget Collins’ The Binding (The Borough Press) leapfrogged Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Faber) to become the bestselling hardback fiction title of 2019 to date, with 44,225 copies sold since its release in January. It is one of just two debuts in the top 10 Original Fiction titles of the year so far, with Stacey Halls’ The Familiars (Zaffre) in sixth overall.

Suzie Dooré, publishing director for The Borough Press, said: “We are so proud that last week The Binding overtook Normal People to become the bestselling hardback of 2019. Although it seems certain that the mighty Margaret Atwood will take the crown shortly with The Testaments, even a brief window as the bestseller of the year to date is an incredible achievement for a debut adult novel.”

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Smeds and the Smoos (Alison Green) rocketed into the Top 50 in 16th place, defeating the previously immovable The Wonky Donkey (Scholastic) in the Pre-School number one. Roald Dahl’s Matilda: How to be Brave (Puffin) was the third-highest new entry in the kids’ charts—behind The Marvel Studios Character Guide and The Smeds and the Smoos—selling 4,131 copies.

Jodi Picoult’s A Spark of Light (Hodder) held the Mass Market Fiction number one for a second week, selling 12,733 copies, with Adele Parks’ Lies Lies Lies (HQ) and Elly Griffiths’ The Stone Circle (Quercus) charting straight into the top three. A familiar cloak and hood returned to the Top 50, ahead of the publication of its sequel—The Handmaid’s Tale (Vintage) jumped 68% week on week to hit 48th overall.

The print market bounced upwards after a summer malaise, jumping 16% in volume week on week to 3.4 million books sold and improving 12% in value, to £30.2m—a value high for the year to date.