Lee Child scores sixth number one title with 'Personal'

03.09.14 | John Lewis - The Bookseller

Lee Child has scored his sixth Top 50 number one title after selling nearly 30,000 copies of his thriller Personal (Bantam Press)

Personal is the 19th installment of the author's bestselling thriller series to feature former United States Army Major Jack Reacher. 
Previous titles to feature the adventure hero and top the charts include Gone Tomorrow, 61 Hours, The Affair, Worth Dying For, and Never Go Back - the latter two claiming number one on the Top 50 in both their hardback and paperback formats. Personal topped the chart with 29,238 copies sold in the seven days to 30th August and is the first fiction hardback to take top spot so far this year.

In the same seven day period last year (w/e 31st August), Child claimed the top spot with Never Go Back selling 25,403 copies, giving Personal a 15% first week chart sales up lift over its predecessor.

Child's success also gives Transworld more weeks at number one (11) than any other publisher so far this year. The company has scored number one hits in 2014 so far with Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, Sophie Kinsella's Wedding Night, Dan Brown's Inferno, the paperback of Never Go Back and are now one week ahead of their PRH colleagues at Penguin who have 10 weeks with two books - John Green's The Fault in our Stars and Jojo Moyes' The One Plus One.

With new releases from Sarah Waters, James Patterson, Chris Ryan, Jeffrey Archer, Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge, the trade saw something of a mini-super Thursday last week.

Waters’ The Paying Guests (Virago), which has received critical acclaim, debuts at three in the Original Fiction chart, selling 4,431 copies. Waters' previous novel The Little Stranger, published in May 2009, debuted at 14 (w/e 23 May 2009) selling 1,322 before climbing to number four the following week with 3,979. The Paying Guests' first week sales give the author her best first week hardback sales since 2006's The Night Watch, which topped the chart at the beginning of February that year with 4,826 copies according to BookScan figures.

Jeffrey Archer scores his fifth number one on the Paperback chart with Be Careful What You Wish For selling 19,120 copies. This is the fourth part of the author's well-received Clifton Chronicles series and is the third part to hit the top spot.

James Patterson has two new titles. In Original Fiction, Private India, co-written with Ashwin Sanghi (Century) enters at fourth place selling 3,574 copies. This is the eighth instalment of the Private series with the action relocating to the streets of Mumbai and the PI team investigating the gruesome ritualistic murders of women. First week chart sales are up 4.3% on the series' previous entry, Private LA, published in January, which sold 3,426 copies in its first week on the chart and went on to sell 16,480 copies in hardcover.

The mass-market paperback edition of NYPD Red 2, published in hardcover earlier in the year, debuts at three on the paperback chart selling 11,687 copies. The first thriller in the series (NYPD Red) has sold 114,441 copies to date in paperback.

Jamie Oliver comfortably claimed number one on the Hardback non-fiction chart with Jamie's Comfort Food (Michael Joseph) selling 8,375 copies. First week chart sales are down 43%-6,240 copies fewer- on the first week in comparison to last year's Save With Jamie, which debuted at number two behind One Direction's 1D: Where We Are (HarperCollins) in the same week last year. The television programme accompanying the book began transmission on Monday.

Overall, 3.1m book sales registered through Nielsen BookScan last week for a combined value of £23.5m-up 3.8% week on week and also up 0.4% on the same week last year.