Jamie Oliver overtakes JK Rowling in race for top Christmas sales

Saturday, 8 December 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Jamie Oliver‘s latest recipe collection, 15-Minute Meals, is looking set to take the number one slot in the book charts this Christmas after finally overtaking JK Rowling‘s The Casual Vacancy.

The books were both released on 27 September, and Rowling’s first adult novel immediately surged ahead, racking up sales of 124,603 copies to Oliver’s 20,682 in their first week, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.

But last week total sales for Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals overtook The Casual Vacancy, with the Oliver book selling 69,111 copies in the week to Rowling’s 13,504. The Oliver title is now the biggest selling hardback of the year, with 373,943 copies sold to date.

The Casual Vacancy has sold 316,690 copies – fewer than Oliver but still substantially more than Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, according to Nielsen. Mantel’s Booker winner has sold 166,924 copies so far this year, and is the next bestselling hardback novel of 2012, said the Bookseller.

Jon Howells at Waterstones predicted that Oliver would take his fifth Christmas number one later this year. “He’s our bet for number one,” said Howells. “It’s inevitable that he would beat JK Rowling. Traditionally she sells masses in the first day, the first week, the first month, and then she will still sell well but it slows down. With Jamie Oliver, though, he’ll be slow at the start and continue to build. People don’t rush out to buy the new Jamie the first week of release – he builds more gradually and it becomes a landslide.”

Howells said that Miranda Hart’s Is It Just Me, which sold 36,169 copies last week, was also exceeding expectations, while Rod Stewart’s autobiography, which sold 26,417 copies last week, was heading the rock memoirs pack. “None of that should take away from JK though – The Casual Vacancy has performed brilliantly, but Christmas is about non-fiction,” said Howells.

At independent chain Foyles, meanwhile, Jonathan Ruppin said that The Casual Vacancy was still “comfortably ahead” of 15-Minute Meals, “but Bring Up the Bodies looks like it’ll be our best-selling fiction title – it’s been in our top 10 fiction ever since it came out.” In non-fiction, Ruppin predicted: “Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi will probably be our bestselling non-fiction title although Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries II may also outsell Jamie.”

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