Later editions were published by HiT Entertainment (who had bought the Guinness World Records brand).

The publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2006, with Guinness World Records being sold to The Jim Pattison Group, owner of Ripley's Believe It or Not!.

[2] Read left the team in the mid-1980s (with the book copyright now belonging to GRR Publications Ltd) and the other editors resigned in 1996.

Other records to which this applies include "19th Nervous Breakdown" by The Rolling Stones, "Stranger on the Shore" by Acker Bilk and the Eurovision Song Contest entry "Are You Sure?"

Even after February 1969 the BBC-approved chart, as used by the Book of British Hit Singles, suffered from errors.

Reasons for these include low, late, unusable, or even complete lack of returns from record shops used to compile the chart.

Co-founder Jo Rice has defended the book's choice of source material on the grounds that Record Retailer was the only chart to consistently publish a Top 50 from 1960 onwards.

Subsequent research has shown that during the "disputed" period of the 1960s, the samples sizes of the Record Retailer chart were considerably inferior to those of the other charts: around 30 shops in 1963 in comparison to more than 100 used by Melody Maker, and later around 80 in comparison to NME's 150 and Melody Maker's 200.

The first edition was issued to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first UK singles sales chart, which was published in November 1952, by the New Musical Express.

Keeping in line with the book's parent publication The Guinness Book of Records, each edition of British Hit Singles also contained a 'facts and feats' section, which included various lists of remarkable chart feats such as 'most hits', 'most no.

They also wrote a bi-annual lookback on the major developments in the UK charts in the two preceding years.

The series was soon regarded as the number one source for music and chart reference, thanks to the commercial success of the books and its various sister publications (see below).

The following books were written by them: In the late 1990s and 2000s several other merchandise was produced, such as karaoke CDs, a calendar, a DVD quiz (British Hit Albums and Singles No.

1 Music Quiz) and a series of themed compilation CDs with original hits from the book.