All aboard! Matt Haig pulls into first place with the Indies
The Midnight Train (Canongate) – Matt Haig’s sort-of sequel to 2020’s The Midnight Library – has entered the Independent Bookshop Top 20 in first place in its first week on sale, five rungs higher than its ranking in NielsenIQ BookScan’s overall Total Consumer Market (TCM).
It is one of two new releases near the summit of the Indie Top 20, sitting just ahead of Douglas Stuart’s John of Johns (Picador). NielsenIQ does not reveal sales figures for the indie bookshop sector, so the gap between the two could range from hundreds of copies to just a handful. The two novels sit next to each other in the Original Fiction Top 20 as well – where the gulf between them is a wide 3,799 copies.
Haig’s engagement with indie bookshops certainly helped boost his performance. Alice, from The Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh said: “Two years after the publication of The Life Impossible, we were thrilled to celebrate the release of Matt Haig’s new novel The Midnight Train with a Scottish launch event and a Signed & Dedicated pre-order campaign.
"Haig’s delightful new book and the response to it were nothing short of what we expected from this wonderful author - we received strong sales through our event and pre-order offering, and the beautiful Signed Indie Edition has been really popular since publication."
Elaine Sinclair, owner of Daydreams Bookshop in Milngavie praised Haig’s social media influence: "The signed indie edition of The Midnight Train with sprayed edges has flown off our shelves. The Midnight Library was iconic and readers have been waiting patiently for Matt to delve back into that world."
The oldest title in the indie chart this week – in fact the only title not published in 2026 – sits in third. The paperback edition of Kyung-Sook Shin’s Violets, translated by Anton Hur (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), was first released in 2024, but has entered the chart in third place thanks to the ShelterBox Book Club which has picked the title as their latest choice. It is likely the 3,440 copies the Korean literary star’s novel sold in the full TCM this week have all come via the book club as it has previously failed to sell more than six copies in any given week this year and has never before even hit the three-figure unit-mark.
There are seven further new releases in the Indie Bookshop Top 20 this week, but they all sit within the bottom half, led by Bob Mortimer’s The Long Shoe (Gallery) in 11th position in its paperback launch period, seven notches lower than its TCM position.
Mohamed Salah, Reach Sport’s special magazine celebrating the Liverpool FC right winger’s nine seasons at the club has entered the indie chart in 16th place, 541 places higher than its TCM position. It is not the biggest outlier this week though – instead that honour goes to Edie May Hand’s Dirtpickers (Manilla Press) which only makes it to 649th place in the TCM with 525 copies sold, but just sneaks into 20th position in the indies.
All the other titles in the Indie Top 20 this week slot into the TCM Top 100 – though many of them appear higher for the indies than they do in the market as a whole. That includes Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zi’s and translated by Lin King (And Other Stories) which was announced as the winner of the International Booker Prize on Tuesday 19th May – it takes up ninth place with the indies this week.
The biggest Non-Fiction title for the indies is this chart’s former indie number one, The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris (Hamish Hamilton) which falls four places to fifth. With The Seriously Epic Holiday of Lottie Brooks by Katie Kirby (Puffin) falling out of the chart this week, there are no children’s titles in the Indie Top 20.
The full Independent Bookshop Top 20 can be found on The Bookseller’s bestseller pages.
The Bookseller has adjusted the Independent Bookshop chart to remove some titles where sales do not derive from traditional bricks-and-mortar bookshops, such as exhibition catalogues and those featured on conglomerates’ subscription boxes.
