Market Analysis
Data source NielsenIQ BookScan Date range 26 weeks to 1st November 2025
Indie Retailers’ Top 50 Non- Fiction
Charts
True story: Non-Fiction shows signs of rude health
Last year the adult Non-Fiction market began to flex its market muscle in ways not seen since 2023
F 06
or a while now, the Non-Fiction: Trade corner of NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM)
has felt like it has not been doing as well as the Adult Fiction and Children’s sectors. But while sales may be some way off its 2007 peak of £817m, the category is still show- ing some healthy signs. In 2024, a total of £724m
passed through the UK’s tills – down 4.9% on 2023, but signifi- cantly up on the £585m it managed a decade before in 2014. Sales to the end of week 46 in 2025 are up 5.3%, putting it on track to return to 2023’s performance; if it can manage to end the year 6% up, it will achieve the category’s best performance since 2008. Perhaps the notion of Non-Fiction: Trade falling behind
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction
comes from the fact that the other areas of the market are overtaking it in terms of share of the overall market. So far in 2025 it makes up 40% of the TCM by value, still the biggest part of the pie, but its lowest share to date. Meanwhile, Children’s has held steady at just less than a quarter of the market while Adult Fiction makes up more than 30% of the market in 2025, the first time it has passed this mark since records began. From a volume perspective,
Non-Fiction: Trade now comes in third with 30% of the market. In 2024 it was just ahead of Fiction, but at the time of writing (November 2025) has fallen behind by nearly four percentage points, though with the key trading season still to go this picture might change. One area Non-Fiction: Trade does come in first is the average
Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? sits in second place in the Top 50 bookseller chart
selling price (ASP) – £12.69 thus far in 2025, the 10th consecutive year of growth and its highest ASP since records began. That increase in ASP is no surprise when we look at the Non-Fiction bestsellers: the top three titles across May to October – the only three to sell more than 100,000 copies in that period, are all hard- backs with double-digit ASPs higher than £13. The biggest of those is Jamie
Oliver’s Eat Yourself Healthy, with 183,763 units sold at an aver- age price of £15.34, a little over half price. It is one of seven titles from the Food & Drink categories that makes the overall TCM Top 50 for this period – none of which appears in the Independent Bookshop Top 50, where the category is represented only by Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef by cult Instagrammer the Slutty Cheff. The Slutty Cheff’s book, it
could be argued, is better suited to joining the other 18 Autobiographies & Biographies
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Raising Hare Chloe Dalton Canongate, 9781837260867
Is a River Alive? Robert Macfarlane Hamish Hamilton, 9780241624814
Always Remember Charlie Mackesy Ebury Press, 9781529108446
The Salt Path Raynor Winn Penguin, 9781405937184
Dwell Simon Armitage Faber, 9780571394470
The Place of Tides James Rebanks Penguin, 9780141991924
Want Gillian Anderson Bloomsbury, 9781526657909
Ocean Sir David Attenborough, Colin Butfield John Murray, 9781399818506
The Siege Ben Macintyre Penguin, 9781405961745
Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal Robin Ince Macmillan, 9781035036929
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Frankly Nicola Sturgeon Macmillan, 9781035040216
Domination Alice Roberts Simon & Schuster, 9781398510081
Michael Palin in Venezuela Michael Palin Hutchinson Heinemann, 9781529154726
The Finest Hotel in Kabul Lyse Doucet Hutchinson Heinemann, 9781529151022
Meditations for Mortals Oliver Burkeman Vintage, 9781529939538
BBC Proms 2025 BBC Proms, 9781912114207
Question 7 Richard Flanagan Vintage, 9781529935479
Mother Mary Comes to Me Arundhati Roy Hamish Hamilton, 9780241761717
The Garden Against Time Olivia Laing Picador, 9781529066708
The Almanac Lia Leendertz Gaia, 9781856755504
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