Nielsen BookData Announces 'In Too Deep' Is The Official New Zealand Number 1 Christmas Bestseller

New Zealand’s most beloved author Lee Child, alongside brother and co-author Andrew Child, has topped the Christmas charts for the 3 rd year in a row, with In Too Deep to make it the official New Zealand BookScan Christmas Number One, selling just under 2500 copies in the week ending 14 December. In Too Deep is the 29 the thriller to feature the well-known character, Jack Reacher.

It is the fifth time that Lee Child has taken the top spot since BookScan tracking began in New Zealand, as well as the third year in a row, with previous number ones featuring in 2016: Night School: Jack Reacher 21, 2018: Past Tense: Jack Reacher 23, 2022: No Plan B: Jack Reacher 27, 2023: The Secret: Jack Reacher 28, and now 2024: In Too Deep: Jack Reacher 29. This puts Lee Child in first place for the most number ones this Christmas week of book sales since BookScan began back in 2007. The only other author to come close with four Christmas number ones is Annabel Langbein, with her successful Free Range cookbook series from the early 2010s.

The 25th Jack Reacher novel, The Sentinel, was the first to be co-authored with his brother Andrew, and it continues the series’ bestselling streak having sold more than 100 million copies worldwide of Reacher books. This latest novel, In Too Deep will be the last one to be co-authored, going forward the series will be written solely by Andrew Child (Lee’s younger brother).

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

The top-selling New Zealand published title this Christmas week is Tasty by Chelsea Winter (published by Allen & Unwin New Zealand). Having sold more than 11,000 units through the BookScan panel since publishing on 1 October, it has been the overall number one selling title twice, and the number one non-fiction title seven times this year-to-date.

Nevena Nikolic, NZ Territory Manager at Nielsen BookData, said: “Adult Fiction has been the starperforming category across 2024, and for 5 years running, and is up 0.5% by volume on last year. Within this broad category Genre fiction, such as Crime & Thriller and Romance, has performed particularly well thanks to #BookTok helping drive sales. Given Lee Child is the most successful author in NZ across all genres, with over 900,000 books sold since BookScan began tracking sales in 2007 (including those co-authored with Andrew Child), it is well-deserved he has taken the number one spot for the fifth time in 16 years.”

Christmas is the key trading period in the New Zealand book industry, and this year is no exception, proving book sales have been resilient in the face of many on-going challenges in retail. In total, $5.1m was spent on printed books in New Zealand in the seven-day period ending 14 December across 33k ISBNs or separate book titles, an uplift of 40% on the average unique weekly titles of 23.5k, showing the support New Zealanders have for buying a wider range of books at Christmas time.

In Australia, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight by Nagi Maehashi tops Nielsen BookScan’s 2024 Christmas bestseller list, having sold nearly 28,000 copies during the same week of 8 to 14 December. In the New Zealand bestseller chart, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight features in 6th place at nearly 700 copies.

This year’s New Zealand Top 10 bestselling titles in the Christmas week includes five adult Fiction titles, three Non-Fiction titles (all of them cookbooks) and two Children’s titles. Two out of the Top 10 books were published in New Zealand; number 3, Tasty by Chelsea Winter and number 9, More Salad: Two Raw Sisters by Margo Flanagan & Rosa Power (both published by Allen & Unwin New Zealand).

Note:

Data: Nielsen BookScan New Zealand. Printed book sales data comes from the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand Total Market panel of more than 275 book retail outlets throughout New Zealand.

© Scoop Media