Dragons and Reichs storm the charts

19.07.11 | Philip Stone - The Bookseller

George R R Martin’s A Dance with Dragons sold 28,840 copies in just five days last week, becoming one of the fastest-selling fantasy novels since records began.

The 1,040-page, 1.5kg epic took £372,650 through UK bookshop tills last week at an average selling price of £12.92—48% off its £25 r.r.p. The novel, the long-awaited fifth instalment in the American novelist’s A Song of Ice and Fire medieval fantasy series, was comfortably the bestselling hardback fiction book of the week, outselling nearest competitor Karin Slaughter's Fallen (Century), by almost five copies to one. However, it has to settle for fifth position in this week's Official UK Top 50.

Helped by a spot in W H Smith’s half-price “book of the week” promotion, and a “better than half price” deal at Waterstone’s, Kathy Reichs’ 13th Tempe Brennan thriller, Spider Bones (Arrow), is this week’s new number one thanks to a seven-day sale of 32,456 copies.
The Leopard (Vintage), Norwegian Jo Nesbø’s eighth Harry Hole thriller (but only the sixth to receive a UK translation), climbs six places into second position helped by a spot in WHS’ “£2.99 with the Times” promotion, while Lesley Pearse’ Belle and Dawn French’s A Tiny Bit Marvellous (both Penguin) take third and fourth spots respectively.
A Dance with Dragons' 28,840 sale is the second strongest opening-week sale from a novel in 2011, with Jean M Auel’s The Land of Painted Caves (Hodder & Stoughton) the only book to have sold more in its first week in stores (39,513). Terry Pratchett is the only other fantasy novelist to have scored 30,000-plus first-week sales since Nielsen BookScan records began in 1998.
In total, £612,000 was spent on the works of George R R Martin at UK booksellers last week, meaning approximately 50p in every pound spent on a science fiction and fantasy novel last week went towards a copy of one of his books.

Other new entries into the Official UK Top 50 include: the film tie-in edition of David Nicholls’ One Day (Hodder), last week’s Richard and Judy Book Club review title, Erin Kelly’s The Poison Tree (Hodder), and the third and final book in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, Forever (Scholastic).
The latter was the bestselling children’s book in the UK last week, in a week when overall children’s book sales climbed 10% week-on-week, according to BookScan Top 5,000 bestseller list data. However, children’s sales last week were down 5% on the same week last year—due largely to a huge decline (90% year-on-year) in sales of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight titles.
Overall, £27.5m was spent at UK book retail outlets last week, up 1.6% on the previous week but down 7.8% year-on-year—in part due to the continued sales slump within the fiction sector.