'Vlogger' beats JK Rowling with bestseller

A British video blogger has sold more than 78,000 copies of her first book in a week, beating established authors like JK Rowling and Dan Brown.

"Girl Online" by 24-year-old Zoe Sugg set a record for sales of a debut novel in Britain, the media reported on Wednesday, citing records that have been kept by Nielsen BookScan since 1998.

Sugg, better known as "Zoella", started out in 2009, handing out beauty and fashion advice on YouTube to a legion of fans via her video blogs or "vlogs".

Her account has six million followers, mainly teenagers. One of them, a 13-year-old girl, persuaded her publisher father -- Penguin Random House director Tom Weldon -- to give Zoella a two-year contract.

The result is a novel about the feelings of a young adolescent with a blog. The rights for the book have been sold in 25 languages.

"I'm legit blown away by this. I never in a million years thought that so many of you would pick up a copy of Girl Online. Almost wanna cry," she tweeted.

 

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