JK Rowling has stormed to the top of the fiction charts with her first novel since the success of Harry Potter, The Casual Vacancy sitting pretty at number once after selling 124,603 copies in the first three days.
The adult novel, which hit shelves last Thursday and has so far received mixed reviews from critics, has become the fastest selling hardback since Dan Brown's last book The Lost Symbol was released in 2009.
Figures from Nielsen BookScan show it sold 20 times the next new entry The Power Trip by Jackie Collins and is outselling it's closest rival 1356 by Bernard Cornwell by 10 times. Though it's success pales in comparison to the huge sales JK Rowling was used to with each edition of the seven part Harry Potter series.
JK Rowling moves on from 'Harry Potter' with 'The Casual Vacancy' (WENN)
In 2007 the final book released, 'Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows' sold in excess of 2.6 million in it's first week, counting for two-fifths of all books sold in the UK in that week.
"By way of comparison, the latest phenomenon in the book trade, Fifty Shades of Grey, sold 664,000 in its highest week of sales so far," Nielsen BookScan's David Walter said.
"JK Rowling's UK sales to date are of a value in excess of £238m, making her by far the highest-selling author in the UK since our records began [in 1998]."
'The Casual Vacancy' a dark, black comedy centring around a local council election in a West Country village and is Rowling's first adult book.
Harry Potter comes to an end.....
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