Always (and forever?) indie: Charlie Mackesy’s latest snags its fourth independent number one
In addition to returning to the top spot of the Official UK Top 50, NielsenIQ BookData confirmed that Always Remember by Charlie Mackesy (Ebury Press) has also moved up one place in the Independent Bookshop Top 20 to regain the indie crown for a fourth non-consecutive time.
The result means that Mackesy could be on course to claim the 2025 Christmas Number One in both the UK-wide chart, and the Indie Top 20. The last time a title did that particular double was in 2020 when Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) took over the charts.
Mackesy’s Always Remember precursor, 2019’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, was number one with indies for nine weeks out of its first 12 on sale when it was released in the beginning of November that year – but was pipped to the pole position in Christmas week itself by Adam Kay’s ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas (Picador).
NielsenIQ does not reveal sales data for the Indie corner of the market, but it is likely that, as with its full Total Consumer Market (TCM) – which has seen volume rise 9.1% – there have been increases for the indie sector too.
However, one title that possibly has not seen that increase in indies is Christmas at Highclere by the Countess of Carnarvon (Preface), which has fallen from the top of the Indie Top 20 to fifth. Though that is 378 places higher than its TCM placing, overall sales for the title have dropped 48.5% this week.
The 2024 Indie Christmas Number One was Samatha Harvey’s Booker prize-winning Orbital (Vintage), no doubt benefiting from being in mass-market paperback.
This year’s champ, Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape), has risen one place to take the sixth spot this week, to become the most popular fiction hardback in independent bookshops this week.
Continues...
Read More
Other fiction making a mark this week are indie favourites such as Elif Shafak’s There are Rivers in the Sky and Yael van der Wouden’s Women’s Prize for Fiction winner The Safekeep (both Penguin), which return to the Top 10 in eighth and ninth place, respectively.
Though the top fiction paperback is the Andrew Miller’s Booker shortlistee The Land in Winter (Sceptre) which jumps three spots to third.
Winter is something of a theme as we approach the solstice: Colm Tóibín’s A Long Winter (Picador) returns to the Indie Top 20 in 16th place, 427 places higher than its position in the TCM, the widest gap of any book between the two charts this week.
There is just one children’s title selling enough with the indies to make the Top 20 in the penultimate week before Christmas: Oh Dear, Look What I Got! (Walker).
Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s second collaboration, after a 30-year gap from their We’re Going on a Bear Hunt classic, rises one spot to 19th.
The Independent Bookshop Christmas number one will be revealed on Tuesday, 23rd December alongside the market-wide champion.
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.
