Wimpy Kid braves another week at the top
Following a cascade of new releases last previous week, there’s no change at the top of the Official UK Top 50 for the past seven days, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) as Jeff Kinney’s Hot Mess (Puffin)—the 19th Diary of a Wimpy Kid title—retained the number one position. The latest story of Greg Heffley and his mates sold just over 26,000 copies in its second week—21.4% more than the equivalent period for 2023’s No Brainer.
David Walliams’ Super Sleuth (HarperCollins) experiences a small decline of just 1.2% week-on-week, but remained in ninth place overall—and is still the second bestselling children’s book of the week. Bunny vs Monkey: The Big Glitch by Jamie Smart (David Fickling) remains in third in the Children’s top 20, and despite a unit decline of 12.9%, rises three places to number 16 in the overall charts.
There’s no move for Lee and Andrew Child’s latest Jack Reacher thriller, In Too Deep (Bantam) which takes a second week at number two overall—selling 17,895 copies. Like last week though—and following the pattern of some of the other big brands—that’s down 5.9% compared with 2023’s The Secret.
Like the overall top 50, the Original Fiction chart sees no change at the top with In Too Deep remaining in first place and Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Penguin) staying in second, slightly bucking the trend by improving his sales 5.2% week-on-week.
After the recent avalanche of high-profile new titles, there’s a marked change this week with just 54 new releases in the TCM’s Top 5,000, and only one of these—Mob One (Ebury Press)—making the Top 50, débuting at number 44 with 4,083 copies. For those not in the know, Mob are an online collective of chefs and creators who aim to instil a love of cooking in everyone—but the Mob’s 2.7 million Instagram followers were no match for the power of traditional media, though with Mary Berry’s Mary’s Foolproof Dinners (BBC Books) enjoying a tasty 316% boost and rising to sixth in the overall Top 50, following the start of the BBC 2 series last week.
That puts Berry comfortably at the top of the Non-Fiction Hardback chart with last week’s number one, Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat: Home to Roost (Michael Joseph), dropping to second place with sales of 9,667.
Festive novels are the order of the day in the paperback charts with the Mass Market Fiction top 20 headed up by Sarah Morgan’s The Christmas Cottage (HQ)—achieving sales of 12,689 copies and taking third place in the overall top 50.
Morgan sees an increase of 31.7% week-on-week, but she isn’t the only author celebrating Christmas early with Laurie Gilmore’s The Christmas Tree Farm (One More Chapter) rising two places to third and Jenny Colgan’s Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop (Hodder) moving into the top 20.
The Paperback Non-Fiction chart sees a new number one with the mass-market edition of Prince Harry’s Spare (Transworld)—released the previous week to relatively little fanfare—taking the top spot from G T Karber’s Murdle (Profile). While the Duke of Sussex’s sales of 3,391 are up 87% compared its launch week, it’s not enough to make it into the overall top 50—settling for 73rd place.
Overall it was a good week for the TCM with £37m of sales giving us the second-best week of the year so far— that’s up 2% on last week, with volume sales up 2.2% to 3.9m. Looking at last year, sales are slightly down with total units down 0.7% and value down 0.5%.
