JK Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' tops book charts

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has topped the UK fiction charts less than a week after her first novel for adults was published.

Nielson Bookscan reported 124,603 sales of The Casual Vacancy during the two days from Thursday 27 September when the hardback hit bookshops and eBook sales sites.

It sold ten times more than its closest rival, 1356 by Bernard Cornwell.

Other books to have sold 100,000 copies in their first week include all three books in EL James's Fifty Shades Trilogy and Jamie Oliver's 30-minute meals recipe book which sold over 100,000 copies for four consecutive weeks in the run-up to Christmas 2010.

Rowling holds the record for fastest-selling novel from the final installment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which sold more than 2.6 million copies in its first week on sale in the UK.

By comparison Fifty Shades of Grey has sold only 664,000 in its biggest week so far.

Only five days after publication The Casual Vacancy is the 44th most-sold book of 2012 and is number 25th on the year's adult fiction chart.

Rowling has already sold more than 101 million books without including sales figures from her latest book. She is the highest-selling author in the UK since Nielson Bookscan's records began, with a sales value of more than £238 million.