Bookstat: Mackie packs a punch at the top

Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family (The Borough Press) seemed to strike a chord with a nation that had just spent an extended period indoors with their nearest and dearest, either celebrating Christmas or isolating after a positive Covid test (or both). It thundered into the Bookstat chart’s number one for the week ending 1st January, pipping J B Turner’s No Way Back (Thomas & Mercer) to the post.  

Elizabeth Day’s Magpie (Fourth Estate) and Marian Keyes’ Rachel’s Holiday (Penguin) also made their debuts in the top 10. 

Interestingly, Hachette’s clarified sales figure for Miriam Margolyes’ This Much is True (John Murray), 10,353 copies sold, is more than double Bookstat’s estimate. With the data company’s figures based on regular shopping habits, this may be reflecting a similar phenomenon to what we saw at the very start of the pandemic, with e-book sales unusually high. Perhaps the amount of people self-isolating owing to the rapid spread of Omicron over Christmas saw sales spike.