Digital Bestseller Lists: Kay tops weekly e-book ranking as Amazon list joins line-up

As the old saying goes, new year, new e-book charts—the Bookstat E-Book Top 10 is joining the Publisher E-Book Ranking in The Bookseller‚Äôs regular e-book chart section.

While the Publisher E-Book Ranking, which has been running since 2016, is collated using data supplied by publishers, Bookstat scrapes data from online retailers to provide an estimate of sales. This publisher-supplied ranking is for the week ending 28th December, as it runs a week behind the print charts, but the Bookstat top 10 is for the week ending 4th January. There is also no price limit on the Bookstat charts, whereas the E-Book Ranking only features titles priced at £2 or above.

Amazon-published titles dominated the Bookstat E-Book chart for the first week of the year, with imprints Thomas & Mercer and Lake Union accounting for six places between them. Jess Lourey’s Unspeakable Things, a crime thriller set in a small American town in the 1980s, took the inaugural number one spot with estimated sales of 24,256 units, including preorders. Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, briefly priced at 99p, is the only title from a non-Amazon imprint in the top five*. Self-published author L J Ross also featured, with Ryan’s Christmas in sixth place.

Adam Kay continued to dominate the publisher-supplied E-Book Ranking, with his two titles occupying the top two positions. Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express re-entered the chart, perhaps giving insight into the average commuter’s thoughts on returning to work post-Christmas.

Correction

* Sales of theHachette titles The Silent Patient were under-estimated in the Bookstat e-book chart (29th – 4th January), referenced above. It means The Slient Patient would have been placed higher than reported in last week’s chart. Bookstat estimates sales numbers based on tracking the movement of e-books online, but the variance between the estimates and publisher actuals ought to be within an acceptable range, and we apologise that this was not the case.