Prince Harry’s Spare has sold almost half a million copies in the UK in its first week on sale, making it the fastest-selling nonfiction book since records began.
According to Nielsen, Spare sold a total of 467,183 print copies through UK retailers in its first week of release, making it No 1 on the book charts. This does not include ebook sales or audiobook copies.
Penguin Random House (PRH) UK said the book had sold 750,000 copies in the UK across all formats – hardbacks, ebooks and audiobooks – in its first week. Of these, 400,000 copies were on its first day on sale in the UK.
Larry Finlay, managing director of Transworld, the PRH division which published the book in the UK, said Guinness World Records had confirmed that Spare was the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever on its first day of publication.
Finlay said as well as being the fastest selling, “we now know that it is also the biggest selling memoir ever in its first week of publication”.
In second place in this week’s UK chart is Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book by Nathan Anthony, which sold 31,928 copies.
Spare is the fastest-selling nonfiction book in the UK since Nielsen BookData’s official printed book sales records began in 1998. The previous record was held by the first Pinch of Nom cookbook by Kay Allinson, which sold 210,506 copies in its first three days of release in 2019.
Waterstones said the pre-orders for Spare, which are counted in the first official week of sales, were “the largest on record for a nonfiction title” for the retailer, with nonfiction category manager John Cotterill saying they were “delighted with the first week’s performance”.
“Waterstones’ sales of Spare have been exceptional,” Cotterill said. “Seven days after publication, Spare is one of Waterstones’ fastest-selling books in a decade.”
The book also remains No 1 on the Amazon bestsellers chart, and is the site’s bestselling nonfiction title.
Spare sold a combined 1,430,000 copies on its first day on sale in the US, Canada and the UK, according to the book’s publisher Penguin Random House, overtaking Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which had previously recorded the biggest first-day sales for the publisher.
The US had originally printed two million copies, and the publisher is now reprinting.
Harry’s controversial memoir Spare made headlines ahead of publication. The Guardian was first to report of a passage in the book which described a physical fight between Harry and his brother Prince William.
After the book was accidentally put on sale in bookshops in Spain, more revelations followed, including that the royal brothers asked their father not to marry Camilla and that King Charles reportedly called Harry the “spare” when he was born.
Harry has made a number of media appearances for the book, including an ITV interview in the UK and appearing on Stephen Colbert’s late-night talkshow in the US.
