'Strong cookbook sales' for Sainsbury's

02.10.13 | Lisa Campbell - The Bookseller

Sainsbury’s has told The Bookseller it saw “strong sales” in cookbooks

 in its second quarter. Save With Jamie by Jamie Oliver (Penguin, 29th

 August) was its top-selling print book for the 16 weeks to 28th September. 

In e-books, J K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown) was the supermarket's

 top-selling title.
Overall, Sainsbury's reported a like-for-like sales increase of 2.0% in the quarter, with a total 

sales increase of 4.6% excluding fuel. Sainsbury’s chief executive, Justin King, said that the 

chain was the only major supermarket to be growing market share.

“We have delivered strong sales over the quarter, continuing to outperform the market in what 

remains a tough retail environment,” he said. King added: “Our groceries online business grew 

by over 15% in the quarter and is now worth over £1 billion in annual sales.” The store’s 

convenience business also grew by 20% year-on-year as “customers topped up more frequently

 during the warm summer weather".
Tesco also gave a trading update today (2nd October) covering the six months to 31st August 

2013. In the update, Britain’s largest supermarket chain reported a 23.5% drop in profits over

the period to £1.39bn after a “challenging retail environment in Europe”.

However, Tesco's UK trading profit was up 1.5% to £1.13bn. UK like-for-like sales fell by 0.5% 

at the company. The firm's chief executive, Philip Clarke, said Tesco was making progress and 

was strengthening its UK business, but he saw little improvement in consumers' spending power.
"There is less pessimism around, but customers are still not seeing real disposable incomes

 improve," he told the BBC's "Today" programme.