Old stories prove new hits as Binchy takes top spot
30.06.10 | Philip Stone in The Bookseller

Two books that were penned well over 10 years ago, now published by Orion, proved the bestsellers in the UK last week.

But despite setting his strongest ever weekly sale helped by a half-price book-of-the-week spot at W H Smith, Harlan Coben's début novel, Play Dead, has to settle for second position in this week's Official UK Top 50 behind his Orion stablemate Maeve Binchy.

Binchy's The Return Journey, a collection of short stories written for newspapers and magazines, was first published in 1998, but was never available to buy in the UK until last year. Number three in the charts last week, it actually suffered a 12% week-on-week sales decline but climbed two places to top spot. As a consequence, Binchy has earned her 10th number one since Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market records began in 2001. Sales were helped by a spot in WHS' "£2.99 if you spend £10 on books" link-save promotion.

Coben's Play Dead was first released in the UK by Piatkus in 1991, and sold 30,180 copies in three days last week—beating Coben's previous weekly sales personal best (set by Long Lost in January this year) by 1,419 copies.

Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Atom) suffered a 43% week-on-week sales drop and falls two places to third position overall while James Patterson's I, Alex Cross (Arrow, down 33% week-on-week), falls two places into fourth place.

The mass-market edition of Jodi Picoult's Picture Perfect (Hodder), a Waterstone's till-point proving a modern hit. First published in the US in 1995, the book hit the shelves in the UK for the first time last year following the careful management and staggered-release of Picoult's backlist by her UK publisher Hodder. The publisher began publishing the US novelist in the UK back in 2004.


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