Zoella hits number one, as sales soar for Super Thursday

Zoe Sugg’s non-fiction debut Cordially Invited (Hodder & Stoughton) has made itself at home in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 19,804 copies for £201,749. In the week of Super Thursday, 19 new entries charted in the Top 50, with the top three—Cordially Invited, Ian Rankin’s In a House of Lies (Orion) and Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre)—particularly tight, finishing within 800 copies of one another. 

Super Thursday week also saw the market surge 7.7% in volume and 9.2% in value, hitting its second-highest volume for the year to date (at 3.57 million books sold) and highest value (at £34.5m). Average selling price rocketed to a record high of £9.66. 

YouTuber Zoella has previously racked up three weeks as the overall number one, her YA Fiction series Girl Online selling 1.3 million copies combined since 2014. However, Cordially Invited has had a slower start than Sugg’s record-breaking Children’s debut, selling 75% fewer copies than Girl Online (Penguin) four years ago. But with her first Hardback Non-Fiction number one, the vlogger joins exalted company—the only other author to top both charts is Terry Pratchett, after Darwin’s Watch: The Science of Discworld III (Ebury) topped the Hardback Non-Fiction top 20 in May 2005.

Rankin’s In a House of Lies swiped the Original Fiction number one, top of 11 new entries in the top 20—including Bernard Cornwell’s War of the Wolf (HarperCollins)  in second, Peter James’ Absolute Proof (Macmillan) in fourth and Graham Norton’s A Keeper (Coronet) in sixth. This was the veteran crime author’s 17th week in the top, and his first since 2015. 

Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz, a regular at the top of the Weekly E-Ranking since the spring and a former Original Fiction number one in hardback, blazed into the Mass Market Fiction top spot, trailing Rankin by 342 copies. For its first three days on sale, it beat the initial week’s sales of fellow debut Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), the bestselling book of 2018 to date, by 838 copies.

Gary Barlow’s A Better Me (Blink) sold 16,814 copies to claim second place in Hardback Non-Fiction to Cordially Invited, with Kevin Keegan’s My Life in Football (Macmillan) scoring fourth. Scarlett Curtis’ Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and Other Lies) (Penguin), whose promotional in-store pop-up was controversially torn down by Topshop last week, hit 12th place with 4,495 copies sold.

Liz Pichon’s new Tom Gates title What Monster? (Scholastic) scared off Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage (Penguin and David Fickling) from the Children’s top spot, for her 19th week atop the chart. Jacqueline Wilson’s My Mum Tracy Beaker (Doubleday Children's) hit second place, scoring 23rd in the Top 50.

While the Pre-School top 20 practically had spiderweb decorations and a carved pumpkin outside—with seven Hallowe'en-related titles entering the chart, including two editions of Allan and Janet Ahlberg's Funnybones (Puffin)—the Children's Non-Fiction chart marked the end of September with a rush of annuals. Sixteen charted last week, elbowing the back-to-school-boosted An Inspector Calls (Heinemann) from second to 16th place.