Indies play the Longing game as Shubhangi Swarup’s 2021 novel surges to number one
The independent retail market in the UK is of a size that means a couple of strong events can radically change the make-up of the chart – something that is very much the case this week, as Shubhangi Swarup’s 2021 novel Latitudes of Longing (riverrun) re-enters the Independent Bookshop Top 20 at the very top.
It is partly for this reason that NielsenIQ BookData does not reveal sales figures for the indie bookshop chart – but with an average selling price of £8.49 for independents, similar to the wider Total Consumer Market’s, it is likely that the majority of the 2,532 copies moved across all retail outlets this week were part of a single bookshop’s event. Those 2,532 units had Latitudes of Longing hit 86th place in the full TCM, while in the previous week it shifted 25 copies, good enough for the 16,931st spot. Nearly 80% of the book’s lifetime sales across all editions have come in the past seven days.
Debuting in second place on the Indie Bookshop chart is Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race (Orbit), which recorded just over 3,000 copies in the TCM this week at nearly full RRP. Race’s first in her Tudor-inspired Queens of Elben series was due to be in Goldsboro Books’ Science-Fiction and Fantasy subscription for June, so it is possible a large number of sales went through the London and Brighton-based indie.
It is when we reach position three that we find our first book that has almost certainly done well across a wider spread of different indies, as Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep (Penguin) debuts with a high placing thanks to its winning of the Women’s Prize for 2025, some 21 places higher than in the TCM.
Jo from Red Lion Books in Colchester said: “The Women’s Prize has clout. While the Booker nominations can challenge us, the Women’s Prize inspires us. Titles on the long or shortlist benefit from the exposure because, based on previous lists, customers are highly likely to choose them. The consistency in high-quality writing and the power of storytelling garners trust and support from indie bookshops and their readers.”
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Hutchinson Heinemann) has crashed back to earth – after debuting at number one in the indie bookshop chart it fails to make a dent in the top 20 this week. Meanwhile, the overall TCM number one, Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Viking), has slipped further with the indies and is now in 19th position.
The full Independent Bookshop Top 20 can be found on The Bookseller’s bestseller pages.
