David Walliams’s tale of a boy trying to break his father out of prison, Bad Dad, has beaten Jamie Oliver’s latest recipe collection to the top of the Christmas book charts.
Walliams’s children’s novel sold 60,700 copies in the last week alone. It is the second year running the comedian has taken that the Christmas No 1, after The Midnight Gang headed the bestseller lists in 2016.
Bad Dad by David Walliams
60,700 copies, totalling £376,000
5 Ingredients - Quick & Easy Food by Jamie Oliver
59,092 copies, totalling £704,000
Guinness World Records 2018
48,670 copies, totalling £455,000
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway by Jeff Kinney
36,368 copies, totalling £218,000
Blue Planet II by James Honeyborne and Mark Brownlow
33,326 copies, totalling £426,000
La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One by Philip Pullman
30,237 copies, totalling £379,000
Bletchley Park Brainteasers by Sinclair McKay
29,915 copies, totalling £263,000
Origin by Dan Brown
29,370 copies, totalling £287,000
Darker by EL James
28,821 copies, totalling £122,000
Only Fools and Stories by David Jason
26,847 copies, totalling £276,000
Oliver’s 5 Ingredients came in second place, selling 59,092 copies in the last week, according to sales monitor Nielsen Book. Despite missing out on the top spot, Oliver’s title looks set to be the bestselling title of the year, according to the Bookseller, with more than 700,000 books sold so far this year, ahead of Bad Dad’s 568,000 copies.
Two other children’s titles made the top 10 alongside Walliams’s novel: Jeff Kinney’s 12th instalment in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which came in fourth, and Philip Pullman’s return to the world of His Dark Materials, La Belle Sauvage, which came in sixth. Third place went to Guinness World Records, with adult fiction also selling strongly this Christmas, including new titles from EL James and Dan Brown. Just one celebrity memoir made the top 10: David Jason’s Only Fools And Stories.
Christmas book sales over the last four weeks hit £227.9m in value, down 5% on 2016, but up 18% on five years ago. Nielsen said that this year had kept pace with last Christmas, which saw “phenomenal” book sales with titles including the script of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the Ladybird and Famous Five parody books and Joe Wicks’s Lean in 15 series.
“Christmas is such a vital time for the book industry, and we’re pleased that 2017 has been another strong sales year,” said Nielsen’s Andre Breedt. “We’re also encouraged to see fiction return to the top of the charts.”
The Christmas period accounts for approximately 15% of annual book sales in the UK, with approximately 360,000 different book titles sold in the average week. Bookshops have been benefitting from an increase in physical book sales, which rose for the first time in four years in 2015 and continued in 2016 as ebook sales shrank 4% and print jumped 2%. An increased appetite for cooking books and colouring books among consumers has been credited for the shift.
