RF Kuang's Katabasis launches straight into first place in the charts

With more than 40,000 copies sold in its first five days on the sale, Katabasis (HarperVoyager) – the latest novel from RF Kuang – has hit first place on the Official UK Top 50 at the first time of asking, according to the latest data from NielsenIQ BookData’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).

It is the first time that Kuang has reached the pinnacle of the charts, and only the second time she has claimed pole position in the Original Fiction (OF) Top 20 after Yellowface – published as Rebecca F Kuang by The Borough Press – achieved the same result in May 2023.

Katabasis leads the way in a week that fires the starting pistol for the key autumn trading period – it is surely still too early to say the "C" word – with 10 new releases in the OF chart alone, and the top six made up entirely of new releases. Adam Kay’s debut crime novel, A Particularly Nasty Case (Orion) takes second place with 13,936 copies sold in its first week – thanks in part to a nationwide tour – one of just four books to sell more than 10,000 copies this week.

The only non-adult fiction title to sell more than 10,000 copies this week is AF Steadman’s Skandar and the Spirit War (Simon & Schuster) – the much-anticipated fifth title in the Skandar series has sold 18,137 copies in its first week giving it second place in the TCM and first place in the Children’s chart, selling three times as many as second-placed Cozy Corner (Penguin).

This latest addition to the series is the best first-week performance to date for Steadman – up 44.1% on the fourth title’s debut week in October 2024. This performance takes total sales for the Skandar series above £3m – with the first title in the series, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief responsible for £1.2m of that.

The previous TCM number one – Freida McFadden’s The Surrogate Mother (Poisoned Pen Press) – retains its Mass-Market Fiction (MMF) crown, despite a 34.2% reduction in sales compared with the previous seven days. With 11,499 copies sold it is nearly 3,000 copies ahead of second-placed You Are Here by David Nicholls (Hodder), but it is Richard Osman who is the one to keep an eye on.

Following the release of the Netflix adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club (Viking), the film tie-in edition has risen into the MMF Top 20 while the original edition has seen its sales grow 25.4% in the latest week, taking fifth place. Combined, the two editions have sold 13,015 copies – a figure that would give it first place in the MMF chart and fourth place in the TCM.

The latest chart data also sees a raft of new releases in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart (HBNF), with nine new releases, although none of them can quite reach the top spot, which sees a return for The Let Them Theory by Mel and Sawyer Robbins (Hay House UK) after its sales have risen 16.6% week on week.

The top of the Paperback Non-Fiction chart sees no changes in the top six positions, with Gillian Anderson’s Want leading the pack for a sixth consecutive week despite an 11.5% drop in sales compared with the previous week.

This week’s hardback new releases have helped volume sales rise by 4.7% to 3.3 million books, bringing in a total of £31.6m – an increase of 8.7% against the previous week’s performance. Compared with the same week in 2024, volume is down 7.2% while value puts in a slightly better performance down 3.1% – thanks in part to a rise in the average selling price of 41p.