Pinch of Nom propels print market to impressive growth

Blog-turned-bestseller Pinch of Nom has earned more through the TCM than any other title did in the entirety of 2018, leading the market to a healthy helping of growth.

For the past few years, the print market has been growing consistently but slowly. In 2018, full-year value improved 2.14% against the year before, while volume squeaked into the black with a 0.3% rise. But 2019 is breaking the mould. For the half year—including Unclassified titles—print is up 2.2% in volume, to 82.9 million books sold, and up a stunning 4.4% in value against the first six months of 2018. At £696m earned through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM, it is the best half-year value since 2011, and the fifth consecutive half-year jump. Weekly value has risen against its 2018 equivalent in each of the past 12 weeks.

Volume’s recovery is also encouraging, after a recent trend for value rises against volume declines. However, average selling price has somehow climbed to ever-more-dizzying heights, with an 18p bump year on year to £8.40—a penny higher than 2017’s full-year a.s.p. Given that 2019 still has its ultra-spendy Christmas gift-buying period to come, could this be the year a.s.p. breaks the £9 barrier?

Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom packed a punch, instantly becoming the fastest-selling non-fiction title since records began on its publication in March—with 210,506 copies sold in its first three days on sale—and going on to sell 812,794 copies by the half-year mark. Its strapping £10.12 average selling price also saw it bring in more than £8.2m in its first three months—more than any title earned throughout the entirety of 2018. Wherever Pinch... goes, growth follows: non-fiction is up 8.4% in volume and 8.5% in value year on year; Health, Dieting & Wholefood Cookery’s value improved 23%; and even hardback sales zipped up by 6.9% in volume. With Pinch... stripped out, the overall market would still be up year on year, but flatter: 1.2% up in volume and 3.1% in value.

Second helpings
Featherstone and Allinson weren’t satisfied with a single chart-topping behemoth: follow-up the Pinch of Nom Food Planner also thundered into the overall number one spot, barely a week after its predecessor had vacated it. (Although the prequel would return a week later, putting itself on equal footing with Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15, both on nine weeks in the top spot.) Though its stay at the summit was briefer than the original Pinch, the Food Planner sold 71,176 copies in just under three weeks, and charts just outside the half-year Top 50.

Pinch begat Hinch: fellow Instagrammer Mrs Hinch’s Hinch Yourself Happy would have claimed the fastest-selling-non-fiction title record, were it published a fortnight earlier. The cleaning guide, which with Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying has helped boost the House & Home category 161%, has shifted 351,464 copies in the first half of the year, behind only Pinch... and David Walliams and Tony Ross’ Fing.

While Fing scored second place for the half year, with a volume just under half that of Pinch of Nom, Walliams’ June-published The World’s Worst Teachers managed to swipe 42nd place in the half-year chart on just three days’ worth of sales—shifting 86,001 copies in its launch week. The series title is so far the fastest selling of all Walliams’ World’s Worst... titles, and is already more than halfway to leapfrogging Fing to become the bestselling Children’s title of 2019.

David and Goliath
The kids’ book market wasn’t all Walliams though, just mostly: the bestselling World Book Day 2019 title, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of Greg Heffley’s Best Friend, sold 181,862 copies, and Craig Smith and Katz Cowley’s The Wonky Donkey shifted 133,333 copies. No picture book has recorded a longer run as the Children’s number one.

Fiction hung on to growth by the skin of its teeth, improving 0.8% year on year in value—though volume fell 3.9% against the six-month period in 2018 in which Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine sold 488,408 copies. Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz continued to sell in 2019, after racking up 13 weeks as the Mass-Market Fiction number one at the end of 2018. Up to the half year, it sold 329,072 copies, beating Jojo Moyes’ Still Me to the fiction top spot. Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers soared past the 200,000-copy mark, and Sally Rooney’s Nibbies Book of the Year Normal People shifted 127,472 copies to hit the 2019 top 20, bagging 19th place.

Date range 26 weeks to 29th June 2019. Unless otherwise stated, charts use data from the Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market, representing print book sales through around 6,500 retailers. Any title discounted by more than 74.5% is ineligible for inclusion