Awful Auntie is fastest selling 2014 hardback

Published October 8, 2014. By John Lewis - The Bookseller

• David Walliams' Awful Auntie is the fastest selling hardback published in 2014 after selling 100,000 copies in just two weeks.

The children's hardback, which has also been enthusiastically received critically, holds the top spot for a second week with 52,750 copies, the highest seven day sales tally for a number one so far this year and up 8.5% in volume week on week. The lift pushed the author's sales tally for 2014 over the 800,000 mark across all physical editions of his books and means Walliams has so far been worth £4.3m to booksellers in the UK this year.

Awful Aunties' success surpasses records set by the paperback edition of Dan Brown's Inferno (Corgi), which took three weeks to pass the 100,000 benchmark back in May and also held the previous to figure for a number one this year with 51,749 week ending 17th May.
Eight hardbacks have achieved sales of more than 100,000 copies in the UK so far this year, half of which were published in 2014 including Egmont's Minecraft Construction and Combat Handbooks (431,428 and 372,552 copies sold to date respectively), BBC's Mary Berry Cooks (251,498 copies) and Walliams latest bestseller. Demon Dentist, the author's previous bestseller and the Top 50's number one title in the same week last year has also sold over 100,000 copies in hardback this year taking its overall sales tally to 490,727.

For a second week in a row, the TCM grew week on week. In the biggest week for book sales so far this year. 3.4m books registered through Nielsen BookScan for a combined value of nearly £31m, up 12.3% in value on the previous week and up 0.5% on the same week last year.
In addition to Awful Auntie, there were strong performances across Fiction, Biography, Food & Drink and academic subjects.

David Nicholls' Us (Hodder), the follow-up to his 1.7-million-copy selling One Day, was the highest Fiction new entry, debuting at number one in Original Fiction and number five in the Top 50 selling 13,925 copies, the third highest debut for an Original Fiction topseller so far this year behind Robert Galbraith's The Silkworm (Sphere) and Lee Child's Personal (Bantam Press).

The film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (Phoenix) opened in cinemas last Friday and sales climbed substantially week on week with the standard and film tie-in editions of the thriller selling 46,259 copies, up 66% on the previous week.

Jeffery Deaver's The October List (Hodder), a new entry at seven in the paperback Fiction chart joins Jane Shemilt's Daughter (Penguin) as another successful thriller  to feature mother's in desperate situations, attempting to discover the whereabouts of their daughters. It sold 7,017 copies last week.
In hardback Non-fiction, Stephen Fry climbs six places this week to claim first place with his third collection of memoirs. More Fool Me (Michael Joseph) sold 14,819 in its first full week of sales and was up 255% in volume week on week.

There were no changes to the top five in paperback Non-fiction with Alfie Deyes' The Pointless Book (Blink) remaining at number one for a fifth week.