JK Rowling’s new book The Tales of Beedle the Bard has followed in the footsteps of its seven predecessors to fly to the top of the UK’s book charts, selling more than five times the number of copies of its closest rival despite being on sale for just three days.

Almost 368,000 copies of the book were sold last week, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, compared with 73,236 copies sold of second-placed Guinness World Records, and 68,073 of At My Mother’s Knee, Paul O’Grady’s autobiography.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard was published last Thursday, with a worldwide print run of eight million copies, and net proceeds going to charity. Although its opening dwarfs the rest of the Christmas titles currently jostling for position in the book charts, the sales are a long way off those of the final book in Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which racked up three million sales in its opening weekend last year.

Nonetheless, bookshops expect Beedle to remain at the top of the charts until Christmas at the earliest, and the book is currently number one on both Amazon and Waterstone’s online bestseller lists. “The low price-point [of £6.99] helps, and the fact that it is so ‘pick-upable’,” said Foyles head of buying Kate Gunning. “[It's] good to have a new title published so near to Christmas, and that the proceeds are going to charity.”

A collection of five fairy tales set in the Potter world, the slim book – weighing in at just 109 pages, compared with the 832 of Deathly Hallows – includes commentary from Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore, and Rowling herself. Although it featured in Deathly Hallows, where it helped Potter destroy his arch-nemesis Voldemort, the boy wizard himself has no part in this latest addition to Rowling’s oeuvre.

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