Pinch of Nom Food Planner grabs number one spot

Pinch of Nom authors Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson have rustled up a ninth week as the Official Top 50 number one, with the Pinch of Nom Food Planner (Bluebird) taking the top spot, selling 45,211 copies in its first three days on sale. The planner and its blockbuster series predecessor Pinch of Nom both charted in the top three, creating an Ian Rankin sandwich as the crime author’s In a House of Lies (Orion) slipped to second place. 

The planner became the fastest-selling Paperback Non-Fiction title of the year to date, whisking straight into the category chart top spot and making it a Pinch of Nom double in the non-fiction chart number ones—as the cookbook cruised into its 11th Hardback Non-Fiction pole.

It was a good week for diet book sequels—perhaps, despite the torrential rain, the bookbuying public felt the incoming tremors of beach season. Dr Clare Bailey and Justine Patterson’s The Fast 800 Recipe Book (Short) shifted 18,700 copies to chart fourth place, following on from Michael Mosley’s The Fast 800, which spent two weeks in the number one spot in January and has shifted 157,475 copies to date.

Father’s Day gift-buying was also in evidence, with Peter Crouch’s How to Be a Footballer (Ebury) improving 28% week on week, James O’Brien’s How to Be Right (W H Allen) jumping nine places to 11th and Harry Redknapp’s The World According to Harry (Ebury) jumping 78%. Last year’s Father’s Day bestseller Ant Middleton’s First Man In (HarperCollins) got a boost in paperback, leaping 58% week on week. Ollie Ollerton, Middleton’s "SAS: Who Dares Wins" co-presenter, saw his memoir Break Point (Blink) return to the Top 50, charting alongside Damien Lewis’ SAS Italian Job (Quercus), in a strong military theme across both fiction and non-fiction. 

Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men: My Daddy (Egmont) also returned to the Top 50 and swiped the Children’s number one spot from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid (Puffin), improving by 80% in volume on the week before. 

Peter Robinson’s Careless Love (Hodder & Stoughton) was the highest new fiction entry in sixth place, missing out on the top five to Ruth Jones’ Never Greener (Black Swan) by just 58 copies. 

Karin Slaughter’s The Last Widow (HarperCollins) knocked Victoria Hislop’s Those Who Are Loved (Headline) from the Original Fiction top spot, the crime author’s first number one in the category chart since summer 2012. Ben Aaronovitch’s The October Man (Gollancz) also entered the chart, in third. 

Tayari Jones’ Women’s Prize winner An American Marriage (Oneworld) sold 5,237 copies to enter the Top 50 for the first time. Since its win a week and a half ago, it has sold 9,348 copies, 42% of its total sales in paperback to date. 

Was everyone saving their Father's Day bookbuying to the last minute? The print market soared 14.5% in volume and 14.7% in value week on week, to 3.54 million books sold for £30m—its highest for the year to date.