What Independent Bookstores Are Actually Selling Right Now

By Andy — 2026-10-22 — Literary News

Kathryn Stockett has the top spot. Again.

The Calamity Club sits at number one on this week's Independent Press Top 40 list, which tracks actual sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide. That's worth noting, since independent bookshop sales charts tell you something quite different from algorithmic recommendations or mainstream press attention.

The list, compiled by the Independent Publishers Caucus in partnership with the American Booksellers Association, reveals a genuinely odd collection of what's moving. Homer appears twice—both his Odyssey and Iliad in Emily Wilson's translation, sitting at positions five and nineteen. Either independent bookshop customers have tastes closer to classrooms than we'd assume, or these translations have become the kind of object people buy to own rather than to have already read.

More strange: Beth Brower's The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion appears six times across the list. Not once. Six times. That's an unusual kind of momentum.

Kat Dunn has two on there—Rottenheart at sixteen and Hungerstone at thirty-seven. Claire Keegan sits at eleven and fourteen with two different books. These aren't mega-bestsellers in the crossover sense. These are mid-list titles catching real traction at actual bookshop registers.

The publishers doing well aren't the industry giants either. Grove Press, Crooked Lane Books, Torrey House Press, Transit Books. Small presses. Independent presses.

What strikes you, though, isn't just what's on the list.

It's what isn't. The algorithmic behemoths, the BookTok sensations, the Netflix adaptations—they're somewhere else. These forty titles represent something more like actual human beings walking into a bookshop and making decisions. Not decisions handed to them by marketing spend or TikTok virality. Just people choosing books.

Mix of recent releases and older reprints. Horror collections sitting next to translated Dutch philosophy. by Lily King) but also obscure small press debuts. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in deluxe edition at twenty-three. Stoner

That's not chaos. That's taste.

Source: "Based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association." — Independent Publishers Caucus