Book sales the week before Christmas were highest in 10 years

£83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas

'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' script by Jack Thorne was the biggest-selling book of last year, with sales of 1.45 million copies earning £15.8m (Getty)

Christmas trading for the UK book market saw its strongest sales in 10 years, new figures have revealed.

Nielsen BookScan reports that a total of £83.3m worth of print books were sold in the run-up to Christmas, which marks the highest since 2007.

It is also suggested that sales in the UK print book market last year were up for the second year in a row, The Book Seller reports.

Little, Brown's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script by Jack Thorne was the biggest-selling book of last year, with sales of 1.45 million copies earning £15.8m.

The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins, which was hailed as “the new Gone Girl”, was the biggest adult fiction title, selling 1.1 million copies for £5.3m.

Emily Blunt as Rachel Watson in the film adaptation of 'The Girl On The Train'

The book, published by Black Swan, was a word-of-mouth sensation which placed its author, a former financial journalist, in a spot on Forbes' yearly ranking of the richest writers in the world.

Booksellers Association CEO Tim Godfray said: “The graph for booksellers is starting to move up after a very difficult period.

“Thank heavens so many were ... wide of the mark when predicting the death of the physical bookshop and the demise of the printed book.

“I have been hugely heartened by the anecdotal sales reports from our members in the UK and Ireland. Consumers do appear to be coming back to the printed book and bookshops.”