Wicks burns bright: Lean In 15 eclipses 110,000 units

Joe “The Body Coach” Wicks’ Lean In 15 (Bluebird) sold over 110,000 copies last week to easily notch up his second consecutive Official Number One, in a week which saw a number of other health-conscious “new year, new you” books crack the top 50.

Instagram star Wicks’ diet and exercise title shifted 111,830 copies for almost £827,000 through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market last week, a robust 45% rise on the 77,097 units Lean In 15 sold in the previous seven days—and more than 97,000 copies better than last week’s second-placed title.

Wicks’ 111,830-copy total marks the second-biggest weekly tally for a Paperback Non-Fiction number one since records began, eclipsed only the nearly 130,000 copies that Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze? (Profile) shifted in Christmas week 2006.    

Besides Wicks, five other other diet and exercise books were in the top 50, four of which were in the top 11, led by Amelia Freer’s Cook. Nourish. Glow. (Michael Joseph, 9,831 copies) which moved up 13 places to sixth and earned the author her first Hardback Non-Fiction number one.

The other healthy titles were Davina McCall’s Davina’s Smart Carbs (Orion, 9,401, eighth place); Aidan Goggins and Glenn Mattens’ The SIRT Food Diet (Yellow Kite, 8,815, ninth); Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food (Michael Joseph, 8,296, 11th) and Michael Mosley’s The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (Short, 3,953, 48th). Mosley was the co-author, with Mimi Spencer, of the zeitgeisty The Fast Diet (Short) in 2013, which kick-started the 5:2 dieting craze and went on to sell £2.7m through BookScan.

A non-diet “new year, new you” title is the first appearance in the top 50 of Marie Kondo’s international smash, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying (Vermillion), which sold 4,688 copies and hit 35th place. Kondo is a Japanese “organising consultant” whose KonMari Method is meant to “declutter your life”. A huge bestseller in Japan and Germany, in 2015 it also sold 1.2 million units through BookScan USA, the fourth bestselling book in America last year.

Début author Renee Knight’s Disclaimer (Black Swan) is one of the many titles touted as “this year’s The Girl on the Train”. It sold a respectable 16,359 units in hardback last year but is off to a flying start in paperback, claiming the Mass Market Fiction number one and second place overall, on sales of 14,419 copies. Knight edged out Transworld stablemate Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins (Black Swan, 13,644 copies), which hit third place overall in the week it was announced as the Costa Novel Award winner.

Any “new The Girl on the Train” still has to beat the original one: Hawkins’ hit continues to thrive in hardback, adding to its record of Original Fiction number ones (27) with a 6,826 copies sale. In Children’s Jeff Kinney’s Old School (Puffin, 8,287) claimed its fourth non-consecutive number one.

This year has started strongly. Just over £28.2m was sold through the tills in the first week of 2016, up 9.3% on the same week in 2015.