The bestseller charts and how they work

All about the Sunday Times charts, how they've changed in recent years, and why you don't actually need to hit them...

Hi everyone,

I wanted to do a post about the book charts, as this is one of the things that I think is quite incomprehensible for those outside the industry. Partly, this is because you have to subscribe (and pay) for Nielsen, which records the official UK top 50 (and feeds into the Sunday Times chart - you can of course see the chart in the newspaper itself without subscribing to Nielsen) and for the Bookseller (some of this is free, but some is behind a paywall - NB not a criticism!).

Anyway, I wanted to write about the charts, how they work, and also how they have changed, because in my years in publishing I have seen them alter massively, and I'm sure they will continue to shift and evolve in the future, too.

To start with the basics, the main UK chart is the Sunday Times chart, published weekly. There are several categories: paperback fiction, paperback non-fiction, children's, hardback fiction, and hardback non-fiction. These all come from Nielsen, which records all books sold through what we call the TCM (total consumer market). This basically means books through the tills. Not every retailer feeds into the TCM but most do, including Waterstones, TG Jones (previously WHS), independent bookshops, supermarkets, Amazon, and The Works. The latter only began to TCM a few years ago, and this was a big change because previously it had been seen only as a 'special sales' outlet, and some authors could sell large volumes through The Works but not see this reflected in Nielsen, and therefore not in the charts.

There is also the UK top 50, which combines categories to make an overall top 50 bestselling books in any given week. Publishers have access to these sales, we receive them on a Tuesday, and then editors should relay the sales to authors and agents (often on a Wednesday when everything is fully confirmed and we have more context. I like to wait until I have a bit of an analysis to also share with the author, and can give them a fuller picture as to which retailers are selling the most copies, and I like to share ebook and audio sales too where possible).

Ebook and audio sales run a bit differently; the retailers report them to us as the publisher, but they can often be slightly behind due to invoicing times etc. So for example, Audible and Spotify might give us sales but they can often be a few weeks out of date. We can track Amazon daily ebook sales via internal systems, but I'd only share these with an author or agent if they specifically asked, and they are mostly useful for checking whether our advertising or price drops are proving effective or not.

So, the Sunday Times chart itself publishes each weekend, but there is also something called the 'part week' which you might hear publishers talking about. This is basically how many copies a book sells between the publication day on a Thursday (the majority of books are published on Thursdays in the UK; Tuesdays in the US) and the Saturday night at midnight (so three days of sales). Part weeks show up as '0' weeks on Nielsen, and full weeks show up as 1 - and so on. So sometimes, authors might aim to chart in the part week, and if they don't, be hopeful for the 'first full week.' Often, publishers try to consolidate anything that might drive book sales into this first week; this might be events, where a bookseller will come with a card machine and put sales through the TCM that way, or the event might be held in a bookshop itself; PR pieces that make a difference e.g. broadcast or similar; marketing activity including advertising to help drive numbers all in the same period of time, the aim being to get a high enough cumulative number to hit the top ten. We also as publishers look at competition - i.e. what is coming out on the same day from other publishers, as that can affect whether or not you might chart. The chart is at a different level each week - for example in one week you might need to only sell 1600 hardbacks to hit the top 10, but in another it might be more like 3000. For paperbacks, the numbers are higher, as you can see below. Pre-orders also feed into the part-week so that’s why those can be so important for authors.

Sometimes, books can stay in the charts for a long time, and it's also normal for books to re-enter the charts post-publication, too - they can drop in and out depending on how a particular week has gone (which can be influenced by, for example, a strong week of PR, or a film adaptation coming out and driving something back to the top of the charts). The Sunday Times charts are physical books only, and international copies / library copies etc do not count (though those do count towards your overall sales, for which you will get royalties or PLR monies in the case of library borrows). NB If you are a writer and not registered for PLR (public lending right) do so now! You get paid every time someone borrows one of your registered books from a UK library. It's great!

In the Bookseller, there is also a chart called the Heatseekers chart, which shows books that are selling well, but have never made it into the UK top 50. I always think this is a really nice chart to be in as it's an indicator of consistent, solid sales. In ebook, there is the Kindle top 100 and then each ebook retailer has its own internal charts too, so you can be in the Apple top 100 or the Kobo top 100, etc. These retailers are selling smaller numbers than Amazon, as a rule, but if you reach the top you will still be shifting a fair amount of copies. For audio there are the Audible and the Spotify charts and again, if you're at the top of these you will be selling a good amount of audiobooks, and there are specific audio promotions that can help drive these sales (I have written more about pricing and promotions here). The Bookseller also has charts that show the top 20 and some smaller categories too which you can see here.

So - hopefully that helps explain the basics. I also wanted to touch on the fact that now, we're seeing a very different set of charts to what we saw when I first started working in publishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are VERY dominated by big brand names, and we tend to see the same authors sitting at the top of the charts for months (namely Colleen Hoover, Richard Osman, Freida McFadden in fiction at the moment). What we also see now is books hit the number 1 position due to subscription boxes. Sub boxes as they are known have changed the charts hugely. For example, your book might get taken on by a box such as Fairyloot (other prominent subscriptions include Illumicrate and Goldboro) and this might mean that a large order of thousands of copies gets put through the tills in week one, pushing you to the top of the charts. You might then see a big drop off the week later, as those customers who subscribed to the box have now had their orders fulfilled. So it is common now to have a book drop in to the top spot for one or two weeks only. Sub boxes are complicated and need a whole other post to go into properly, but what I would say is that anything that gets books into readers' hands is a good thing in my opinion! They do mean the charts can look a bit different, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You do also see other names entering the top 10, but again it is now pretty rare for real debuts to enter the top 10 without a sub box, unless they have a really big cohesive campaign and a very strong sales sub (i.e. lots of retailers are stocking the book in high quantities). It definitely does happen - recent examples include The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and The Names by Florence Knapp, but it is way less common now than it used to be. Many of the sub boxes cater for the SFF (science fiction and fantasy, including romantasy) readership, with some focusing on romance and some on crime, so for books outside those genres, hitting the top 10 is challenging. There are also new sub boxes launching fairly regularly of differing sizes, and some publishers are even creating their own.

So - what does this mean? In my personal view it means that striving for a ST position is no longer what it was five years ago - the goalposts have shifted and success looks different. Of course, every author has that dream and it is possible, but it is so so normal not to hit the top 10 and to still sell really well and consistently, across formats. So I suppose I wanted to write this to make people aware of that, and of the realities of the charts today - it may all look different again in another few years, and that's fine too!

For interest, I am sharing below the recent adult fiction charts from week 35 of 2025 (I specialise in fiction, so this post mainly applies to that area of the market).

HARDBACK FICTION

PAPERBACK FICTION

The other thing that can influence the charts of course is an award listing, or a promotion such as the Waterstones Book of the Month. The Richard and Judy Book Club used to influence the charts but no longer sells the same volumes as it used to, sadly. Big US buzz (such as a Read with Jenna or a Reese Witherspoon pick) can influence the UK too, but not always. Celebrity publishing can often chart but again, not always! And someone like Freida McFadden is essentially a bit of a phenomenon, helped by TikTok - and she and other similar US based authors have huge backlists that can help boost their readership as readers have a wonderfully insatiable appetite! None of the above is meant as a criticism - I love getting books into readers hands, I love that readers are finding new ways to consume fiction, and that authors are being discovered post-their debuts. But it does mean that getting a debut to chart in a 'traditional' way is not what it once was, and I think it is important for authors to understand this so that nobody feels bad about themselves!

Remember, the charts aren’t everything, you can chart with any book (even if it’s backlist, or it’s your tenth novel, or it’s your first) and success looks different to everyone. I had a coffee with lovely Emma Gannon recently, who writes a brilliant Substack called The Hyphen if you don’t already know of it, and we were discussing all of the different routes into getting published and how the landscape is shifting all the time. You never know what’s round the corner, and the most important thing is that your books reach readers - no matter how that’s done.

I hope this post was helpful - thanks for reading and as always, post any questions or comments below. I have some more interviews coming up for you soon, so stay tuned and make sure you’re subscribing so that you don’t miss a post.

Phoebe x