SECTOR ANALYSIS
Trendwatch Food for thought
84,031 units
Bored of Lunch: … Air Fryer Book Nathan Anthony Ebury Press
47,878 units
There are eight history titles in this top 50, compared to just two in the all-retailers TCM Non-Fiction chart for the same period
the UK’s biggest selling non- fiction title, but the pop star only scrapes into 48th place among indies. The celebrities that do well with independents tend to be on, shall we say, the Radio 4/Guardian end of the spectrum such as David Mitchell’s second-placed Unruly. Or are indie booksellers themselves (sort of), such as Rick Stein, who co-owns Cornwall’s Padstow Bookshop with industry veteran Ron Johns. Late summer/autumn Non-Fiction sales through indies, by and large, veer towards the more “serious” history and politics end, such as MP turned podcaster Rory Stewart’s chart-topper. Since it was published on 14th September, Politics on the Edge has been a mainstay in The Bookseller’s weekly Independent Bookshops Top 20, earning three number ones, placing second four times and never driſting lower than fiſth. There are eight history titles in this
top 50, compared to just two in the all-retailers TCM Non-Fiction chart for the same period (Mitchell’s Unruly and Ben McIntre’s Colditz). Plus, there are a few autobiographies and
INDIE BOOKSHOPS, AS IS DAVID MITCHELL BELOW
RAYNOR WINN IS A BIG HIT WITH
2008. It sold not too shabbily, particularly for a nearly 800-page door-stopper: 12,000 units through the TCM in the subsequent 15 years. But since “Barbenheimer”
biographies you might call “history adjacent”, such as Daniel Finkelstein’s family Holocaust memoir Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad and Katherine Rundell’s Baillie Gifford/British Book Awards-winning life of John Donne, Super-Infinite.
Then there is the Hollywood boost
for American Prometheus, Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin’s biography of J Robert Oppenheimer and director Christopher Nolan’s main inspiration for his biopic of the Manhatan Project physicist. The book was originally published by Knopf in the US in 2005, winning the Pultizer a year later and was brought out by Atlantic here in
(the simultaneous release of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie”) this summer it has shiſted almost 25,000 copies for £300,000. Relative indie sales for American Prometheus outpaced the wider market: it is 25th placed here, 57th on the full TCM. Raynor Winn’s 2017 nature writing cum memoir The Salt Path broke through because indies championed it and they still support the author with three entries here, two in the top five: her latest, Landlines, and her long-running The Salt Path. The later title illustrates another key difference in the indies Non-Fiction top 50: no doubt because of astute algorithm- busting handselling, backlist continues to work in the autumn period. Seventeen of the books in this chart
were published in their first formats before 2022, compared to just eight TCM-wide.
February 2024–July 2024 07
Slimming Eats Made in the Air Fryer Siobhan Wightman Yellow Kite
43,603 units
Bored of Lunch … Slow Cooker Nathan Anthony Ebury Press
36,152 units
Air-Fryer Cookbook Jenny Tschiesche Ryland Peters & Small
28,323 units
Poppy Cooks Poppy O’Toole Bloomsbury
*Sales are across all editions through the entire TCM.
© Robert Darch
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