Yesterday, I wrote about the 2025 overall book sales numbers, but that data does not tell the entire story. From a PW story here:
The Independent Publishers Caucus, a collective of 117 small and independent publishers, has announced the launch of a new weekly bestseller list in partnership with the American Booksellers Association, creating what organizers say is the first national ranking focused exclusively on independent press titles sold at independent bookstores.
Dubbed the Independent Press Top 40, the new list debuts this Wednesday and offers separate fiction and nonfiction lists of 40 titles each. The intent is to surface popular titles that are typically denied appearances on traditional bestseller lists due to the dominance of Big Five blockbusters.
The new list draws from sales rankings reported by independent bookstores to the ABA—the same methodology the ABA uses for its Indie Bestseller and regional lists—but filtered to include only independent publishers. Updated lists will be published every Thursday and will be available as PDFs and Excel spreadsheets at the IPC website, with direct links to titles on Bookshop.org.
"When you take out Amazon, when you take out the large press books, and you just have independent publishers at independent bookstores, you get this really interesting list," Dan Simon, IPC cofounder and publisher at Seven Stories Press, told PW. "It's like going to a foreign land. It's really different."
Click through to read more about the list and why it was created.
But why is this list important us? Well there are a few reasons:
- Bestsellers lists identify titles that readers see as "pre-approved." Why? Because the human brain says, "well if this many people spent money on this book, it must be good." Of course this is not necessarily true. And just like with a book with high checkouts, we have no idea if all of those people even read it, let alone liked it. But that doesn't matter here. If something is a "bestseller" many readers will give it a serious look.
- Allowing more books to shine as bestsellers in their own categories means more access to titles people wouldn't find without some help. The more bestseller lists the better. Why? Because each time you break the bestseller list down into smaller categories, more titles get their chance to shine. And with our readers, we want to find a way to make the overwhelming universe of books feel a little more manageable. A bestseller list is a type of display. Amazon does this very well as they make their lists very specific, so specific that even I was a bestseller with the orange banner in multiple categories this past fall.
- Sales to independent books stores are a good mirror of the tastes of library users. Go look at the list. These are titles you know are very popular with your readers and supporting independent book stores is something libraries can easily get behind.
- Not everything worth buying comes out from a Big 5 publisher. I say this as a Big 5 author myself. I know we know this, but the Book Scan driven bestseller lists do not reflect this.
- This gives you another resource to find titles you should but for your library collection. I know that some of you cannot buy a book if it did not have a review in certain sources or (if not) at least made a bestseller list. This is a great bestseller list to help you add great titles to your collections.
You can see the lists here. Bookmark it because it will update every Wednesday.
I would consult it weekly along with the USA Today, NYT, and of course the monthly LibraryReads list which comes out tomorrow.
