Not clowning around: Mick Herron tops the indie chart 

In its second week on sale the latest Slough House thriller, Clown Town by Mick Herron (John Murray), has jumped one space and taken the top spot in the Independent Bookshop Top 20 – according to NielsenIQ BookData’s Total Consumer Market panel (TCM).

It has fared better with the indies than in the UK-wide TCM – where it has tumbled 14 positions to 23rd in its second week on sale after experiencing a 53% drop in sales.

Herron holds off three new releases – including Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know (Jonathan Cape) which takes second place, performing slightly better in the indie ranking than the UK Top 50 where it debuted in eighth.  

On Clown Town’s success Mel Griffin from Griffin Books in Penarth said: “Our signed copies of Mick Herron’s latest, Clown Town, have certainly been flying off the shelves, so I’m not in the least surprised at its bestseller status. We’re so thrilled to see that happen, having hosted an event with Mick in the early days of the Slough House series when he was not nearly so well known. He came across as very modest and unassuming then, and by all accounts is just the same now, despite his stratospheric success.

“We still hand sell Slow Horses all the time based on its perfect mix of strong characters, exciting plot and dry humour, and customers inevitably return in short order for book two and beyond. It just shows how indie bookshops can help champion an author and grow a series – and access to signed copies is definitely a big help in that process – keep ’em coming!”

Despite being published on 11th September, Pastures New from Clare Balding (HarperCollins) only makes its mark on the Indie Bookshop Top 20 in its second week on sale – it is actually the highest-placed of four books entering the chart in their second week, including Alexander Armstrong’s Evenfall (Farshore) in 14th position, and the TCM number one Eat Yourself Healthy by Jamie Oliver in 16th spot in the ranking.

The fourth of these books is the biggest over-indexing book for Indies – Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions) has entered the Indie Bookshop Top 20 in 19th position – some 294 positions higher than its TCM placing.

Along with Oliver and McEwan, there are only two other books from the TCM Top 20 which appear in the Indie Bookshop Top 20 – Nikita Gill’s Hekate (Simon & Schuster) has debuted with indies in ninth place, eight spots higher than its position in the Official Top 50 – while it is an exact match for David Nicholls’ You Are Here (Hodder) as it appears in 11th place in both charts.

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 subscription boxes.