Pinch of Nom sequel knocks David Walliams from number one spot

Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom: Everyday Light (Bluebird) has thundered into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 129,985 copies in its first three days on sale, for £1.3m. Its predecessor Pinch of Nom became the fastest-selling non-fiction title since records began in March and has gone on to sell over 1.05 million copies since.

Usually it’s rare for a December-released diet book to make much of an impact on the charts until January and repentance rolls around—Joe Wicks’s Veggie Lean in 15, also published by Bluebird, bucked the trend last year, selling 51,316 copies in its mid-December 2018 launch week. Yet Everyday Light has gone above and beyond, leapfrogging even Walliams and Tony Ross’ The Beast of Buckingham Palace (HarperCollins).

However, with much of Everyday Light’s first-week sales no doubt coming from pre-orders, the Christmas number one is still all to play for. Though only 2019 could be finished off with an anomoly such as a diet book in the festive top spot, The Beast is much more likely to benefit from UK book-buyers’ laser gift-focus in the week leading up to Christmas. But Everyday Light is currently 40,000 copies up on The Beast as we go right down to the wire—can even Walliams make up that much ground?

This also marks the eighth week this year that a title has managed to sell over 100,000 copies in a single week, with Everyday Light following in the footsteps of its predecessor Pinch of Nom, Mrs Hinch’s Hinch Yourself Happy (Michael Joseph), Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (Chatto & Windus) and Walliams’ The Beast. After The Beast racked up three six-figure weeks on the trot, last week represents the fourth consecutive week the print market’s bestselling book topped the milestone. In 2018, only two weeks saw titles top 100,000, with just three apiece in both 2017 and 2016. If nothing else, 2019 has truly been a year of “event” books.

Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) continued to soar following its Waterstones Book of the Year win, hitting 62,040 copies. Adam Kay’s Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas (Picador) also sold over 50,000 copies in a single week.

Lee Child’s Blue Moon (Bantam) scored a seventh week as the Original Fiction number one, with 25,921 copies sold. This is the crime author’s longest ever run in the category chart top spot. The 24th Jack Reacher title also surpassed 200,000 copies sold this week, only the second title in 2019 to do so, after The Testaments.

For the last few years, the Private Eye Annual has leapt in sales annually, with a seemingly never-ending pool of source material provided by the current political climate. The December general election last week helped the 2019 edition spike to 26,686 copies sold, a 47% spike week on week and 8% up on the previous edition's volume for the same week last year.

Walliams may have lost the overall number one spot, but his newest picture book The Creature Choir (HarperCollins) had a stellar first week, shifting 9,145 units to claim second place in the Pre-School chart.

The print market's weekly sales continued to climb, with nearly eight million books sold for £72.4m. Weekly average selling price nudged back over £9, at £9.07.