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Independently wealthy: A second week in first place for Richard Osman
For a second consecutive week, The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (Viking) has topped the Independent Bookshop Top 20 according to NielsenIQ BookScan – a rare instance of the indie chart matching the overall UK number one.
Second place, however, is a different story, as the highest new release, Crossroads of Ravens by Andrzej Sapkowski (Gollancz) appears in second place in the Indie Top 20, some 48 places higher than its appearance in BookScan’s overall Total Consumer Marker (TCM) chart. NielsenIQ does not reveal sales figures for the independent sector so it is hard to say how big a volume gap there is between the top two titles – but in the TCM the gulf between Osman and Sapkowski is 55,980 copies. With both titles appearing in the Indie Top 20 with an ASP at less than 1% off the RRP, it can be deduced that the indie sector’s share of Sapkowski’s latest sales is bigger than its portion of Osman’s; the ASP in the TCM of The Impossible Fortune is nearly half price, while Sapkowski sees just a 10.3% reduction from the RRP.
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Apart from the matching of first place, the indie chart is quite different from the TCM this week with only two other titles from the UK-wide Top 20 appearing in the Indie ranking. Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders (Cornerstone) takes 17th position in the Indie Top 20, four places lower than its TCM appearance, while David Nicholls’ You Are Here (Hodder) appears 14 places lower in the full market compared to its number six spot with the indies.
Other key releases this week include Mary Portas’ I Shop, Therefore I Am (Canongate), which debuts in fourth with indies – 132 places higher than the retail mogul’s TCM placing, possibly thanks to her appearance at the Booksellers Association’s conference in September.
Simon Armitage’s latest poetry collection New Cemetery (Faber) is this week’s biggest overachiever: it appears in a lucky for him 13th for independents but can only make it to 455th place in the TCM on 827 copies sold.
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.
