Promos stoke August sales

Sales were led for a third successive week by Gillian McKeith’s You Are What You Eat (Michael Joseph), which has now reached the milestone of 250,000 copies sold through the Total Consumer Market in less than two months. The book has so far generated more than £2.8m for retailers, and has so far sold at a relatively restrained discount.

The figure contrasts with high discounts elsewhere at the bestseller end of the market, driven by supermarkets and three-for-two offers. Of the 45 other paperbacks in this week’s Bookseller 50, 19 saw their cover prices reduced by more than £2 on average last week.

Chick lit and romance take a large chunk of stores’ summer reading offers, and 27 of this week’s top 50 books are by female authors. They provide many of the new entries on the charts, among them Candace Bushnell’s Trading Up (Abacus), Jenny Colgan’s Do You Remember the First Time? (HarperCollins) and Chris Manby’s Girl Meets Ape (Coronet), all heavily promoted.

Despite the school holidays, children’s sales are flat at the moment. No fiction title on the hardback and paperback charts outperformed the overall market last week, and paperback sales of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury) are tailing off from last month’s peak.