Cameron joins Testaments at top of bestseller chart

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (Vintage) has reigned atop the UK Official Top 50 for a second week running, selling 36,380 copies in its first full week on sale. This was a 65% decline in sales week on week—but for such an anticipated “event” title, which had already secured a Booker Prize shortlisting and presumably an ample amount of pre-orders (included in its stratospheric first-week volume), it was to be expected. Of 2019’s big-hitting number ones, The Testaments has had the biggest fall from its launch, topping Mrs Hinch’s Hinch Yourself Happy’s 61% drop in April.

David Cameron’s For the Record (William Collins) was the highest new entry in second place, selling 20,792 copies to swipe the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Jamie Oliver’s Veg (Michael Joseph) after four weeks. The former Prime Minister’s memoir becomes the fastest-selling hardback title in the Autobiography category for the year to date and has also notched up the biggest first-week sales in audiobook format for publisher HarperCollins.

A HarperCollins spokesperson said: "We are delighted with first week sales of David Cameron’s For the Record. This has been a hugely professional piece of publishing, expertly delivered with widespread news coverage and David’s many interviews helping drive sales across all formats making the book hardback non-fiction number one, and giving us our biggest ever first week sales for a non-fiction audiobook."

While 2018 was a vintage year for political biographies, with Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury (Little, Brown), Bob Woodward’s Fear (Simon & Schuster) and Michelle Obama’s Becoming (Viking) notching up weekly number ones, the trend was very much fuelled by an anti-Trump sentiment—UK bookbuyers don’t seem to have the same fervour for books that hit closer to home. Having said that, The Ladybird for Grown-Ups book The Story of Brexit (Michael Joseph) sold 141,983 copies over Christmas last year, so we’re clearly taking this massive political undertaking very seriously.

Among UK prime ministers in the Nielsen BookScan era, Tony Blair's A Journey (Hutchinson) shifted 92,060 copies in its first week on sale in 2010, though Gordon Brown's My Life, Our Times (Vintage) sold 3,309 copies in its own first week in 2017. Edward Heath sold 455 copies of The Course of My Life in its launch week in October 1998, peaking at 1,464 in early December that year. Margaret Thatcher's The Downing Street Years was published in 1995, pre-BookScan, but has sold 11,138 copies since 1998.

However, while The Testaments was easily the most valuable title of last week, at a whisker under £500,000 earned, For the Record’s average selling price clocked in at £17.71—even higher than Becoming’s peak at £17.04 (the record a.s.p for a number one title). At this rate, he’ll be able to buy another shed.

C J Sansom’s Tombland (Pan) entered the Top 50 in paperback, but failed to topple Adele Parks’ Lies Lies Lies (HQ) from the Mass Market Fiction number one, falling short by just 434 copies.

Publishers noticeably avoided clashing their big hardback fiction releases with The Testaments, with ten new titles hitting the Original Fiction chart the week before the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale was released, and seven for the week after. Cecelia Ahern’s Postscript (HarperCollins), sequel to PS I Love You, was sent straight into third place, while Peter Robinson’s Many Rivers to Cross (Hodder & Stoughton) surged into fifth and Joe Abercrombie’s A Little Hatred (Gollancz) received a lot of love in eighth.

Elsewhere in Hardback Non-Fiction, rugby player Sam Warburton’s memoir Open Side (HarperCollins) debuted in fifth place, with Louis Theroux’s Gotta Get Theroux This (Macmillan) in sixth.

Dr Megan Rossi’s Eat Yourself Healthy (Penguin Life) defeated 45-week number one This is Going to Hurt (Picador) for the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, becoming only the fourth female author this year to claim the category chart title. The week of the global climate strike also saw Greta Thunberg’s No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (Penguin) rise 29% in volume week on week and soar to second place in the Paperback Non-Fiction top 20.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's The Smeds and the Smoos (Alison Green) held the overall Children's number one spot for a second week, with Cressida Cowell's The Wizards of Once: Knock Three Times (Hachette Children's) the highest new entry in fourth place.