Nielsen Book Announces the #1 Christmas Bestseller

19 December 2019

Nielsen Book Announces the Beast of Buckingham Palace is

the #1 Christmas Bestseller

Auckland, NZ, 19 December 2019 - Author David Walliams tops Nielsen’s 2019 Christmas Bestsellers list with The Beast of Buckingham Palace, having sold over 3,600 copies during the week 8 December to 14 December 2019. According to Nielsen Book, the leading provider of search, commerce, consumer research and retail sales analysis services for the book industry, this is the second time David Walliams has held the top spot on the chart. His debut at number one was in 2017 with Bad Dad.

David Walliams’ The Beast of Buckingham Palace beat Lee Child’s Blue Moon to number one, with both authors competing for the number one spot for the previous two years running, as well as alternating who held the coveted top spot for the last four weeks. Not only has David Walliams provided 2019’s Christmas number one, but he is also the number one selling author in 2019 across all his combined titles with more than 83,000 copies sold year-to-date.

The best-selling New Zealand-published title is Vegful by Nadia Lim, her ninth cookbook tracked through Nielsen BookScan since 2012, with Vegful selling over 11,000 copies year-to-date. Her first cookbook, Nadia’s Kitchen was published off the back of her winning appearance in MasterChef New Zealand and went on to sell over 4,000 copies through BookScan.

“Christmas is such a vital time for the New Zealand book industry,” said Nevena Nikolic, Territory Manager, Nielsen Book NZ. “Nearly 20% of total volume sales for the year are put through the tills in the 4-week period leading up to Christmas, many of which are new release titles, showing just how important the Christmas period is to driving new book sales.”

The Top 10 Christmas Bestsellers list contains a mix of Fiction (two titles), Children’s (five titles) and Non-Fiction (three titles), with Children’s books dominating the list, and four New Zealand-published titles featuring in positions five through eight.

Nielsen Book Top 10 Christmas Bestseller List (ranked by copies sold in week 8 December to 14 December 2019)*:

1. The Beast of Buckingham Palace by David Walliams (HarperCollins)

2. Blue Moon: Jack Reacher 24 by Lee Child (Penguin Random House)

3. Dog Man 8: Fetch-22 by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic)

4. Wrecking Ball: Diary of a Wimpy Kid 14 by Jeff Kinney (Penguin Random House)

5. Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food Inc)

6. The Dinky Donkey by Craig Smith and Katz Cowley (illustrator) (Scholastic)

7. Straight 8 by Kieran Read with Scotty Stevenson (Upstart Press)

8. Edmonds My First Cookbook from Goodman Fielder (Hachette)

9. The Sun Sister: The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley (Pan Macmillan)

10. Guinness World Records 2020 (Pan Macmillan)

*Data sourced from Nielsen BookScan New Zealand Total Market measuring print book sales in New Zealand through its defined panel.

The Christmas period is good news for authors, publishers and book retailers of all sizes. During an average Christmas sales week, approximately 40,000 separate book titles are sold—that is more than an average week during the rest of the year when approximately 30,000 separate titles are sold, showing the extent to which buyers go beyond the normal title range when it comes to choosing their Christmas gifts.

About Nielsen Book

Nielsen Book is a leading provider of search, discovery, commerce, consumer research and retail sales analysis services globally. Nielsen runs the Registration Agencies (ISBN and SAN Agencies for UK & Ireland), provides search and discovery products through its Nielsen BookData product range, electronic trading via Nielsen BookNet and PubEasy services, retail sales analysis via Nielsen BookScan and consumer research through its Books and Consumer Survey. BookScan is the world’s largest continuous sales analysis service and operates in 10 countries and four continents. Retail sales information is collected at the point of sale from thousands of outlets in the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, India, Mexico, Brazil and Poland. Publishers, booksellers and libraries can use the information to assist strategic, acquisition and purchasing decisions. The company is wholly owned by Nielsen. For more information, please visit: www.nielsenbook.co.nz

About Nielsen

Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global measurement and data analytics company that provides the most complete and trusted view available of consumers and markets worldwide. Nielsen is divided into two business units. Nielsen Global Media, the arbiter of truth for media markets, provides media and advertising industries with unbiased and reliable metrics that create a shared understanding of the industry required for markets to function. Nielsen Global Connect provides consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers with accurate, actionable information and insights and a complete picture of the complex and changing marketplace that companies need to innovate and grow.

Our approach marries proprietary Nielsen data with other data sources to help clients around the world understand what’s happening now, what’s happening next, and how to best act on this knowledge.

An S&P 500 company, Nielsen has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than 90% of the world’s population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com

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