It’s a week for Ice & Fire. The fifth book in George RR Martin’s epic series has had an amazing success across the globe and Ireland is no different. It pulled in a remarkable (for a science fiction & Fantasy title) 2,200 sales last week. What’s more, the first book of the series, although it’s sales dropped from last week, still delivered a  creditable result selling 763 units and just clinging on to its top ten place from last week.

I’d be fascinated to know what the ebook leakage figure was for Ireland for A Dance With Dragons, by that I mean, how many fans ordered the book as a digital edition either from a US or UK based services like Amazon. Considering that both the US and UK reported huge sales for ebooks editions of the title, I get the sense that there were many (I myself pre-ordered the book on my kindle and it cost me only $9.99. It is currently $19.89 for Irish readers). It is a mark of the relative protected/backward/challenged (take your pick) the Irish market is with regard to ebooks that no-one seems to be selling an ebook version at ANY Irish ebook site (of which few actually exist in any case) that I can find.

As this weekly look through has highlighted for some weeks, Fiction titles are in complete control of the top ten in Ireland and Irish authors made a valiant stab at it too. It was a good week too, with the figure for top ten sales up some 10% on the previous week. With summer reading offers still rolling you’d expect fiction to remain dominant for some time to come.

1:A Dance with Dragons:Book Five of a Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin, 2,200
2: All for You, Sheila O’Flanagan, 1,794
3: Minding Frankie, Maeve Binchy, 963
4: The Leopard, Jo Nesbo, 949
5: Fallen, Karin Slaughter, 912
6: One Day, David Nicholls, 911
7: Belle, Lesley Pearse, 896
8: Something from Tiffany’s, Melissa Hill, 853
9: The Reversal, Michael Connelly, 811
10: A Game of Thrones Book 1 of a Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, 763

Top Ten Dynamics
IPN is running a top ten dynamics section looking at the top ten with some data drawn out. Nothing too dramatic, but useful nonetheless.

Volume: 11,052 Units
Increase since last week: 1074 units
% Increase since last week: -10.76%
Average Units Per Title: 1,105

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Fiction: 10 titles, 9,978 units or 100%, RRP £11.39
Non-Fiction: 0 titles, 0 units or 0%, RRP £0

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Authors: 10
Irish Authors: 3, 30%
Irish Published Books: 0, 0%

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Average RRP: £11.39
Increase in RRP since last week: £2.29
% Increase in RRP since last week: 10.10%*
*It is important to note that RRP does not reflect actually selling price. Much of this RRP Increase is driven by one title which had a £25.00 RRP.

Data Supplied by Nielsen BookScan taken from the Irish Consumer Market week ending 9th July 2011
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