Green's stars align for the second straight week

25.06.14 | Tom Tivnan - The Bookseller

The second outing for J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith and the paperback release for the newest Bridget Jones failed to dislodge John Green from the top of the UK charts last week.

The American Young Adult superstar's The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin), boosted by the movie release, chalked up its second straight UK Official Top 50 number one, selling 26,678 print copies through Nielsen BookScan last week. Yet, the novel's tie-in edition was also the third bestselling book overall, with the two editions combining for sales of 42,924 copies. Only three books thus far in 2014 have sold more units in one week: Dan Brown's Inferno (Corgi, 51,749 in the week ending  17th May), David Melling's £1 World Book Day title Hello Hugless Douglas (Hodder, 47,130 in the week ending 8th March) and Mary Berry's Mary Berry Cooks (BBC, 42,946 in the week ending 5th April).

Rowling/Galbarith's The Silkworm (Sceptre) hit fourth place in the overall charts with 16,053 hardback sales. That easily topped the Original Fiction chart, a hefty 10,406 copies ahead of the second bestselling hardback of the week, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's Long Mars (Doubleday). The Silkworm and the original version of The Fault in Our Stars were the only books to generate more than £100,000 through the tills last week, almost £167,000 and just over £157,000 respectively.  

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (Vintage) hit the number two spot in both the overall chart and mass market fiction, selling 16,778 copies. This is some distance off the book's first week in hardback last October—after a 14 year gap between Jones novels—when it shifted just over 47,000 units.

There was a significant decline in sales overall through BookScan's Total Consumer market compared against the previous Father's Day week. Sales dropped 10.9% week on week to £20.9m, which is a 4.5% drop against the same week in 2013.  

• RELATED STORIES

• Cleeves, Hannah and Billingham on Harrogate Crime Fest line-upAnn Cleeves (pictured), Sop...
• Retailers look to World Cup for sales boostRetailers have kicked off p...
• Green is transatlantic chart-topperJohn Green's The Fault ...
• Summerdale and S&S partnerSimon & Schuster and Su...
• The Fault in Our Stars tops ChartsJohn Green’s The Faul..