Unbound achieves first Sunday Times number one bestseller

Unbound has achieved its first ever number one Sunday Times bestseller with 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams edited by Kevin Jon Davies.

The book reached number one in the newspaper’s general hardbacks chart. It was number two in Hardback Non-Fiction in Nielsen BookScan’s charts behind Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Air Fryer Cookbook by Nathan Anthony (Ebury). The Sunday Times hardback non-fiction chart does not include cookbooks.

Co-founder and publisher of Unbound, John Mitchinson said: “There can be no happier milestone than a number one bestseller – huge credit to the whole Unbound team and the amazing supporters all around the world whose love for Douglas has put him back where he belongs. We’ve waited a long time for our first number one – what a book to do it with!”

Commissioning editor of the book, Mathew Clayton said: “It’s wonderful to see Douglas Adams [author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy] back at the top of the charts. Although it is now over 20 years since he died, his ideas about life, the universe and everything, feel more relevant than ever.”

Davies, who edited the book, spoke on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” Programme on Monday (4th September), detailing how he delved through Adams’ material stored at St John’s College, Cambridge and found a number of old notebooks, diaries, scripts, drafts and notes. He explained how Adams was “very ahead of the game” and predicted e-books in 1995.

Unbound has created an exclusive blog post for Waterstones for the book and launched the 42 Club, which saw Unbound create specially designed POS (posters, badges, and postcards with a personal letter from Unbound’s co-founder and publisher Mitchinson) for 42 key independent bookstores.

The PR campaign has seen major serial and interviews in the Telegraph, Sunday Mirror, SFX magazine and BBC Radio London with Robert Elms.