Inferno is fastest-selling fiction paperback of 2014

21.05.14 | John Lewis - The Bookseller

Dan Brown has maintained his number one position this week with a 33% increase in sales, making Inferno the fastest selling fiction paperback of 2014 so far crossing the 90,000 barrier in just two weeks.

Inferno (Corgi) sold 51,749 copies according to Nielsen BookScan data, and is already the 12th bestselling fiction paperback of 2014, though it still has some way to go before it reaches either of the top two spots, which are currently occupied by John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin, 204,508 copies) and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (Black Swan), which has sold 220,633 copies since the start of the year.

Brown's previous novel, The Lost Symbol, also saw second week sales increases when it debuted back in July 2010. Week on week, the bestseller saw a 19% rise although the uplift was shallower, volumes back in 2010 were much higher; by it's second week, The Lost Symbol had already sold 259,386 copies.

Also in its second week, Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed (Bloomsbury) saw a fractional 1.4% drop in sales but climbed one place to number two, the first time in six weeks that neither of the two top spots have been occupied by Egmont's mega-hit, Minecraft. The Official Construction Handbook occupies third spot. Sales have dipped below 18,500 copies – the first time it has done so for the bestseller since it entered the top 10. Combat, however, is a non-mover at four with a shallow week on week decline of just 141 copies, selling 16,310 copies.
More