From Publishers Weekly:
The Big Five’s grip on the hardcover bestseller lists continued in 2023, as 84.8% of the 2,080 positions on PW’s weekly hardcover lists were occupied by titles published by major houses. But for the second year in a row, the Big Five’s hold on the lists loosened a bit, dropping roughly three percentage points from 2022, on the heels of a similar three-percentage-point drop that year compared to 2021.
Penguin Random House’s failed acquisition of Simon & Schuster in late 2022 didn’t prevent the nation’s largest trade publisher from increasing its hold on the hardcover bestseller lists last year, with its share of list positions rising to 36.7%, from 34.6% in 2022. Simon & Schuster (14.2% in 2023 vs. 14.3% in 2022) and Macmillan (7.7% in 2023 vs. 7.9% in 2022) had minimal declines, while HarperCollins (16% in 2023 vs. 17.5% in 2022) and Hachette Book Group (10.2% in 2023 vs. 13.7% in 2022) posted more significant drops.
The two independent publishers that did the most to chip away at the Big Five’s control of the hardcover lists were Entangled Publishing and Grove Atlantic. Entangled’s original edition of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was on the hardcover list for 33 weeks, and a special edition of the novel was on the list for six weeks, as was Yarros’s Iron Flame, which was published late in the year. Grove’s The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese also stayed on the list for 33 weeks.
The Big Five’s grip on the hardcover bestseller lists continued in 2023, as 84.8% of the 2,080 positions on PW’s weekly hardcover lists were occupied by titles published by major houses. But for the second year in a row, the Big Five’s hold on the lists loosened a bit, dropping roughly three percentage points from 2022, on the heels of a similar three-percentage-point drop that year compared to 2021.
Penguin Random House’s failed acquisition of Simon & Schuster in late 2022 didn’t prevent the nation’s largest trade publisher from increasing its hold on the hardcover bestseller lists last year, with its share of list positions rising to 36.7%, from 34.6% in 2022. Simon & Schuster (14.2% in 2023 vs. 14.3% in 2022) and Macmillan (7.7% in 2023 vs. 7.9% in 2022) had minimal declines, while HarperCollins (16% in 2023 vs. 17.5% in 2022) and Hachette Book Group (10.2% in 2023 vs. 13.7% in 2022) posted more significant drops.
The two independent publishers that did the most to chip away at the Big Five’s control of the hardcover lists were Entangled Publishing and Grove Atlantic. Entangled’s original edition of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was on the hardcover list for 33 weeks, and a special edition of the novel was on the list for six weeks, as was Yarros’s Iron Flame, which was published late in the year. Grove’s The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese also stayed on the list for 33 weeks.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
Is boutique the word you’re looking for? I checked Baen for comparison and they refer to themselves as traditional. Grove call themselves independent.
Independent of the multinationals, maybe. That’s how they use that term in the UK media, to whom Indies don’t exist.
BAEN uses the term correctly; that *is* their business model since 1983.
You keep using that phrase (“independent publishers”), denizens of PW. I do not think it means what you think it does. Things like who hosts the web activity for Entangled Publishing might… encourage… using a different dictionary. (Go ahead. Try it. It’s worth a laugh.)