Market Analysis
Data source NielsenIQ BookData Date range 26 weeks to 3rd May 2025
Indie Retailers’ Top 50 Non- Fiction
Charts
Dalton raises hope in a Non-Fiction market trailing its counterparts
While Children’s and Fiction are enjoying a fine start to 2025, the Non-fiction sector has fallen year on year—but a rise in selling prices is somewhat sugaring the pill for retailers
W 06
ith combined sales of Fiction and Children’s books up a total of £18.2m so far
this year, but NielsenIQ BookData’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) only up £3.1m, it doesn’t take Rachel Riley to realise that something might be up – or rather down – in Non-Fiction. NielsenIQ splits Non-Fiction
into Specialist Non-Fiction, which includes textbooks and profes- sional resources, and Trade Non-Fiction. This analysis focuses on the latter. The Trade categories have amassed £236.8m so far in 2025, a drop of 2.8%, or £6.8m, while volume has fallen further – by nearly a million books, equating to a loss of 4.8%. As with Children’s
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction
and Fiction, the average selling price (ASP) for Non-Fiction titles has risen, up 2.1% to £12.25. While we can never be certain what has facilitated that rise, that extra 25p for every book sold has helped the category retain an extra £4.8m. The average RRP has risen by
nine pence, thanks entirely to hardbacks, which have not only become a bigger part of the mix –rising from 45.2% of the total Non-Fiction market in 2024 to 45.9% this year – but have also seen their average RRP increase by nearly 50p. Conversely, Non-Fiction paper-
backs have not only seen their volume sales drop more than their more robust counterparts, they have also seen the average RRP fall by 14p, from £12.52 to £12.38. Some
Chloe Dalton’s indie favourite Raising Hare tops the indie bookseller chart – the title is also faring well in its recently issued paperback edition
of that tumble is accounted for the Coco Wyo collective’s small-format colouring books, which have sold 214,915 units so far in 2025. At this point in 2024, they hadn’t yet troubled the charts. There are four Coco Wyo colour-
ing titles (along with one from Vivi Tinta) in the TCM Top 50 in the six months to the end of April, and yet none features in the Indie Bookshop data. In fact, there is a crossover of just 17 titles between the two Top 50s, with only two of the TCM’s top 10 appearing at all in the indie chart: the latest edition of the Private Eye Annual and Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You. The former is actually the
second-bestselling title in indie bookshops across the six-month period, with most of those sales likely coming in November and December. Ian Hislop’s satirical look at the year’s news is beaten to the top by the hardback edition of Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare, a feat that may well be replicated by the paperback edition, which at
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Raising Hare Chloe Dalton Canongate, 9781805302711, Hardback
Private Eye Annual 2024 Ian Hislop Private Eye, 9781901784749, Hardback
Wintering Katherine May Rider & Co, 9781846045998, Paperback
A Pawtobiography Ted the Dog Ebury Spotlight, 9781529944969, Hardback
Politics on the Edge Rory Stewart Vintage, 9781529922868, Paperback
What I Ate in One Year Stanley Tucci Fig Tree, 9780241683132, Hardback
The Place of Tides James Rebanks Allen Lane, 9780241426937, Hardback
Unruly David Mitchell Penguin , 9781405953191, Paperback
The Almanac Lia Leendertz Gaia Books, 9781856754682, Hardback
The Wager David Grann Simon & Schuster, 9781471183706, Paperback
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The Salt Path Raynor Winn Penguin, 9781405937184, Paperback
Patriot Alexei Navalny Bodley Head, 9781847927033, Hardback
Ottolenghi Comfort Y Ottolenghi & H Goh Ebury Press, 9781785038914, Hardback
Want Gillian Anderson Bloomsbury, 9781526657954, Hardback
The Best of Matt 2024 Matt Pritchett Seven Dials, 9781399610438, Paperback
The Siege Ben Macintyre Viking, 9780241675670, Hardback
A Thousand Feasts Nigel Slater Fourth Estate, 9780008670740, Hardback
The Trading Game Gary Stevenson Penguin, 9781802062731, Paperback
Shakespeare Judi Dench Penguin, 9781405956420, Paperback
Three Wise Men Carol Ann Duffy Picador, 9781529083958, Hardback
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