Book sales soared to £23m in UK last week

16.07.14 | John Lewis - The Bookseller

Last week saw £23.4m of book sales registered through Nielsen BookScan; its highest value since the run-up to Mother's Day when just over £24m was spent on books.

Value sales were up 3.2% week on week and a whopping 8.4% up on the same week last year-a difference of £1.8m. nearly 40% of this came from sales of the top 5,000 titles, which were up 6.8% to £11m.

John Green is now tied with Dan Brown for most weeks in the number one spot in 2014, with five consecutive weeks for The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin) selling 27,383 copies in the week and the film tie-in edition enjoying its fourth week at number three selling an additional 16,780. Combined sales (44,163) for the tear-jerker novel were down 15% week on week but sales of the standard edition in first place were still strong enough to keep John Grisham from reaching the summit. Sycamore Row (Hodder) climbed two places to number two selling 24,714 copies-up 41% week on week.

This time last year Grisham climbed one place to hit number one with his last paperback thriller, The Racketeer (Hodder), which sold 29,782 copies week ending 13th July 2013 and has gone on to sell 288,245 over the year and has sold over 1,300 in the last four weeks
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