Still Jojo: Moyes swipes top spot for a second week

Jojo Moyes’ Still Me (Penguin) has held the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 47,483 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market—the highest single-week volume for any title so far in 2019 and the biggest for a Mass Market Fiction title since Dan Brown’s Origin (Corgi) in July 2018. 

Val McDermid’s Broken Ground (Little, Brown) leapt 21% week on week to leapfrog Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre), and scored the author’s highest single-week volume since 2010’s Fever of the Bone.

Michelle Obama’s Becoming (Viking) re-claimed the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start (Absolute). The former First Lady’s memoir increased in both volume and average selling price, hitting £16.06—its second-highest a.s.p. to date, after the week of Christmas.  Perhaps after becoming the nation’s festive gift of choice, the autobiography conquered Valentine’s Day too.

Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love (Penguin) rocketed up the Paperback Non-Fiction chart in its second week on sale, jumping by 45% in volume week on week. However, it could not defeat the category chart’s reigning number one, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt (Picador), which notched up its highest weekly volume since Christmas. Let's not speculate on the mindset of those bookbuyers who, during the week of Valentine's Day, opted for the latter over the former. With 35 weeks now under the junior doctor memoir’s belt, it is now level with Pan Macmillan stablemate Lean in 15 (Bluebird) for weeks atop the chart. 

The top three Original Fiction titles remained solid from the week before, with Sophie Kinsella’s I Owe You One (Bantam), Kimberley Chambers’ The Sting (HarperCollins) and Stacey Halls’ The Familiars (Zaffre) holding firm. Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day (Jonathan Cape) was the highest new entry in 11th place, with Leila Slimani’s Adele (Faber) and Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient (Orion) rising on their first weeks in the top 20.

The longest-running picture book in the Children’s overall top spot since records began, Craig Smith and Katz Cowley’s The Wonky Donkey (Scholastic), was finally nudged off its perch by David Walliams and Tony Ross’ Bad Dad (HarperCollins Children's). With new Walliams title Fing looming, and just beyond that, the 2019 World Book Day tranche, the Children’s chart looks set for a tumultuous few weeks.

The print market held steady, week on week: it dropped 1.6% in value (but from its second-highest week value of 2019 so far), yet improved 0.4% in volume. This was its highest weekly volume of the year to date, at 3.22 million books sold.