JK Rowling gains record number of chart top spots

26.02.14 | Tom Tivnan - The Bookseller

J K Rowling's Robert Galbraith novel The Cuckoo's Calling (Sphere) has narrowly bumped Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (Black Swan) from the top of the bestseller charts, the 70th week a Rowling title has topped the UK Official Top 50.
In doing so, Rowling has chalked up the most overall number ones since Nielsen BookScan records began, supplanting Dan Brown, who has achieved the feat 69 times.

Since BookScan records began in 1998, a book by Rowling, Brown or Jamie Oliver—who has the third most overall number ones with 54 weeks—has occupied the overall number one spot in one out of every five weeks. The total will almost certainly be added to when the paperback of Brown's Inferno is released on 8th May.  

Atkinson, who had held the top spot for the previous three weeks, missed making it a month at the top by just 852 copies, selling 21,276 units to The Cuckoo's Calling's 22,128.

Meanwhile, US Young Adult superstar John Green continues his UK rise, hitting third place with The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin, 15,208 units), his highest ever British chart position. Mo Hayder also attained her highest chart spot, with fifth-placed Poppet (Bantam) shifting 11,599 copies.

In Original Fiction, Josephine Cox's The Runaway Woman (HarperCollins) supplanted Lynda Pearse's Survivor (Michael Joseph) at number one, with Cox's title shifting 3,521 copies. Si King's and Dave Myers' The Hairy Bikers Asian Adventures (Weidenfeld, 4,305 units) retained the Hardback Non-Fiction number one for the second straight week, while Eric Lomax's The Railway Man (Vintage, 6,761) has kept the Paperback Non-Fiction number on for the seventh successive week.

Overall, £22.44m worth of print books were sold through BookScan last week, a drop of less than 1% on the previous week and a marginal rise on the same week in 2013 (£22.395m).

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