Extracted from 'Graphic novels help small publishers stay level year-on-year'. First published in The Bookseller 7th Feb. Article written by Alex Call.
The Bookseller’s Small Publishers charts in 2025 include groups with annual turnover of less than £5m via Nielsen’s TCM in 2024. In our latest update, small-publisher regulars David Fickling Books and Sourcebooks have moved above this benchmark – mainly thanks to Jamie Smart and Freida McFadden.
The full TCM for the first four weeks of this year has seen an increase in sales of 1.8%, a total of £2.2m, which is almost identical to the amount Onyx Storm delivered in week four. Excluding the third instalment of Yarros’ Empyrean series, the TCM is down 0.1% – a difference of around £100,000. Our list of small publishers has remained near-enough flat though, with total sales down only £1,251 for the period.
Despite this, there are some fluctuations at individual publisher level – while Curious Universe was our biggest publisher in the first month of 2024, it is New River Books that has taken the top spot this year. This is thanks to one title sitting at the very top of the Small Publishers chart – The Glucose Goddess Method by Jessie Inchauspé. The book was first published in 2023 but has seen a surge in popularity this year following a two-part Channel 4 series at the beginning of January. It has helped New River to a total of £334,691 so far in 2025, a 607.3% increase against this point in 2024.
While Inchauspé has delivered the bulk of that increase, New River – which released its first books in 2023 and was founded by Aurea Carpenter and Rebecca Nicolson, the duo behind indie Short Books, which they sold to Hachette in 2019 – has still seen an increase off a modest base with the health guru’s sales excluded; its non-Inchauspé books are worth £6,191 this year, up against 2024’s £1,715.
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