Selling Abroad: Fifty Shades Dominates, Again

J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy debuted at #3 on the fiction chart in Spain in December, good enough to place it right behind Fifty Shades of Grey, which held steady at #2. Neither book was able to knock The Tango of the Old Guard by Arturo Pérez-Reverte from its spot atop the chart. On the nonfiction side in Spain, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar’s autobiography, Memoires I, debuted at #2, landing just behind the third and final volume in the Pope’s Jesus of Nazareth series, The Infancy Narratives.

Chef Jamie Oliver saw his book, Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals, hit #4 in the Netherlands, where it landed behind Michel van Egmond’s Gijp, which jumped to #3 from #15 last month. Oliver has had huge success in the U.S., beginning with The Naked Chef in 2000 (Hyperion), which to date has sold over 120,000 copies at outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan and is still his biggest seller. In total, Hyperion has published eight books by Oliver and each has sold more than 50,000 copies each.

Oliver was overshadowed in the Netherlands, though—and France and Spain, for that matter—by the Fifty Shades trilogy, which appeared on all three charts this month. The three books that make up the trilogy made the top six in the Netherlands, and in France only Joël Dicker’s The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair was able to sell more in fiction.

International Bestsellers