With sales like this, baby, Bruce is number one

Bruce Springsteen has thundered into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot with his memoir Born to Run (Simon & Schuster), which sold 37,518 copies for £437,540, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market.

The Boss decisively brought The Girl on the Train’s run in the top spot to an end, giving Simon & Schuster just its fifth overall number one since records began, and the publisher’s first ever with a hardback title. Joey Barton’s No Nonsense and Rachel Hore’s The House on Bellevue Gardens also charted in the Top 50 last week for S&S.

In testing new times for celebrity autobiographies, Born to Run is the first of its ilk to go to number one since Alex Ferguson’s My Autobiography (Hodder) in October 2013, which went on to spend eight non-consecutive weeks in the top spot and sell 847,846 copies.  The last musician’s memoir to go to number one—using the term “musician” loosely—was Cheryl Cole’s My Story (HarperCollins) in autumn 2012.

Though The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) and its film tie-in slip to second and third, they brought in a combined 62,875 copies last week. The paperback has now spent 19 non-consecutive weeks in the Mass Market Fiction number one spot—only the second-bestselling book of all time, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (Corgi), has spent longer in the category top spot. But Hawkins has a mountain to climb; The Da Vinci Code has racked up 87 non-consecutive weeks in the Mass Market Fiction top spot.

In more shock news, Joe Wicks was toppled from the Paperback Non-Fiction number one spot, which Lean in 15 and Lean in 15: The Shape Plan (both Bluebird) have held for a combined 36 weeks. The Body Coach was usurped by The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet Recipe Book (Short), the companion title to Michael “Fast Diet” Mosley’s The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (Short). The recipe book, which is currently being serialised in the Daily Mail, shot upwards (insert your own blood sugar level joke here), shifting 15,241 copies, a 178% jump in volume, and hit fourth place overall. The original title also benefitted, charting 12th in the Top 50 and third in the Paperback Non-Fiction chart, in a neat Wicks-Mosley sandwich (which neither book recommends, by the way).

Joe “Broella” Sugg’s Username: Regenerated (Hodder) dropped down the Original Fiction top 20 after claiming the number one a week ago. Wilbur Smith filled the power vacuum with Pharoah (HarperCollins) to score his 25th Original Fiction number one, selling 9,919 copies. The veteran author now has the same number of Original Fiction number ones as years Joe Sugg has been alive.

As Man Booker Prize shortlist nominee His Bloody Project (Saraband)—which has now outsold every other Saraband title combined—continued to reign in the Top 50, competitor Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen (Vintage) ascended to the top of the Fiction Heatseekers chart. Next week could see two Booker shortlist contenders in the Top 50.

Clare Balding’s children’s title The Racehorse who Wouldn’t Gallop (Puffin) cantered into 34th place, joining Jilly Cooper's Mount! (Bantam) to make two horse-themed books (though for very different markets) in the Top 50.

Though the Children’s number one has been locked down by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) for the last eight weeks, there was movement in the top five last week. The Racehorse who Wouldn’t Gallop hit fourth, while both Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk), boosted by the release of its film adaptation, and Cris Silvestri’s Pokemon: Deluxe Essential Handbook (Scholastic) leapfrogged Children’s stalwarts Julia Donaldson and David Walliams to take third and second place respectively.