The Independent Press Top 40 is a partnership between the Independent Publishers Caucus and the American Booksellers Association; it’s based on what’s selling at independent bookstores and includes only small and independent publishers. There are two separate lists: one for fiction and one for nonfiction.
Important to note: The list is not driven by unit sales like other bestseller lists. While each participating bookstore submits its top 40 titles by sales volume, the final list is produced based on overall ranking, not units. The goal is to create “an equalizing force” so that titles with high volume and books selling smaller quantities across many stores will both appear.
The debut list, for the week ending Jan. 13, 2026, features Heart the Lover by Lily King (Grove Press) at the top of the fiction list and The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright) at the top of the nonfiction list.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
