Jamie Oliver is biggest-selling author in Britain after JK Rowling

LONDON - British chef Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks are selling so well that he has become the biggest-selling author in Britain after JK Rowling.

UK sales of his cookbooks including his most recent, Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals, have raised an astonishing 101.55 million pounds.

Oliver, 35, is way ahead of his nearest culinary rival Delia Smith on 62.5 million pounds, but still a good distance behind the 228.45 million pounds spent on Harry Potter books.amie’s 30-Minute Meals is selling almost 80,000 copies a week on the back of a television series and strong promotion by Sainsbury’s, which Oliver endorses.

Its sales were 35,000 ahead of its closest rival Guinness World Records and it is currently outselling comedian Michael McIntyre’s biography by almost three-to-one copies.

It took more than 1 million pounds last week, even after heavy discounts on the 26 pounds cover price, and Oliver will keep probably 10 percent of that.

“Its delightful news,” the Daily Mail quoted the chef who has produced 12 books and topped the weekly bestseller chart more than 30 times, as saying.

Since its release at the end of September, 30-Minute Meals has sold more than half a million copies.

“It’s amazing. 30-Minute Meals is the biggest selling non-fiction book of any kind since records began,” Tom Weldon, managing director of Oliver’s publisher Penguin General Books, said.

“It’s absolutely perfect for this moment. People are time-rushed and in this recession want to cook more at home.

“The reason Jamie has done so well over the past decade is that he is obsessed with every single detail in his books.

“Not just the recipes, the words, the photographs, but the design. He comes in and sits next to the art editor for a week and they do it together. He’s a complete perfectionist,” he added. (ANI)