It just goes to show that any publicity has its good and bad sides. Amazing to think that Akins in the No 1 best seller in the UK.

From the Times, 14 August

Potter is toppled by Atkins bestseller
By Jack Malvern, Arts Reporter


HE HAS defeated dementors and basilisks, but Harry Potter has been toppled from the top of the book charts by the American dietician Robert Atkins.
After seven weeks at the top of the bestseller list, thanks to a record 2.8 million sales, the children’s edition of Harry Potter was beaten by Dr Atkins’s Diet Revolution after a surge of publicity.

The Atkins diet, favoured by celebrities from Catherine Zeta-Jones to Renée Zellweger, is the most popular diet regime despite allegations that it is based on “pseudoscience” and could be a danger to health. Nutritionists said yesterday that followers of the diet, which allows them to eat unrestricted amounts of fatty foods, such as bacon and eggs, were facing unknown health risks.

The figures released yesterday by Nielsen EDI, however, showed that 595,000 people had bought the book in its current edition. The diet plan, first published in 1972, is the most popular ever created, with total sales estimated at more than ten million.

Dr Atkins’s publishers, Vermillion, said that two recent articles in The New England Journal of Medicine and a BBC documentary showing the effects of the diet had boosted sales of the book by up to 75 per cent.

Book experts said, however, that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had set the benchmark for bestsellers. The combined figure for the children’s and adults’ versions is 3.1 million, a record for a single edition of a book. It also set the record for first-day sales, with 1.7 million.

Nicholas Clee, editor of Bookseller magazine, said that seven weeks at No 1 was exceptional for a book, but by no means a record.

Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island was at No 1 for 67 weeks. Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was top for 55 weeks.