Catherine Chidgey's The Book Of Guilt Is The First NZ-Published Book To Hit Number 1 This Year

According to NielsenIQ BookData, the leading provider of consumer research and retail sales analysis for the book industry, The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press) is the first New Zealand published book to hit number one overall this year to date with over 1000* copies sold through the New Zealand BookScan panel of retailers, following Chidgey’s recent successful appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival, Waituhi o Tāmaki.

Number two in this week’s chart is The Let Them Theory, by Mel & Sawyer Robbins (Penguin Random House) and The Book of Guilt has now broken its 5-week run at the top of the charts.

Catherine Chidgey is no stranger to the New Zealand bestseller charts, appearing a total of 183 times across various positions in the NZ Fiction top 10 (since BookScan began sales tracking back in 2008) for her books, Pet (2023), The Axeman’s Carnival (2022), (both Te Herenga Waka University Press), Remote Sympathy, (2020), and The Wish Child (2016) (both Victoria University Press).

Chidgey has previously hit number one on the NZ Fiction chart 25 times prior to this latest week across these same four titles and last week, The Book of Guilt went straight to number one on the NZ Fiction chart after only 3 days on sale. This current week marks a new milestone however, with The Book of Guilt coming in at number one overall across all types of book sales (all genres, both NZ-published and international books).

Nevena Nikolic, Territory Manager for NZ, said: “There has been a 206% increase in sales from 2020 to 2024 for Catherine Chidgey’s titles proving her star is on the rise in New Zealand in terms of book sales. This latest novel, The Book of Guilt, looks set to break further records based on early sales to-date.”

*Source: NielsenIQ BookData New Zealand, BookScan data to week ending 17 May, 2025

About NielsenIQ BookData

NielsenIQ BookData offers a comprehensive range of services to the international book industry, supporting the discovery, purchase, distribution, and sales measurement of books. We proudly manage the ISBN and SAN Agencies for the UK & Ireland, providing publishers with a suite of services, from assigning ISBNs to adding metadata to our database, along with promotional tools to help market your book effectively.

For booksellers and libraries, we offer access to our database of over 52 million book records for title look-up, enriching websites, and managing internal systems. Our research services deliver retail sales analysis for both print and e-books across 17 territories, complemented by insights from our Books and Consumers Survey, as well as Country and Genre-specific reports. The company is wholly owned by NIQ. For more information, visit: niq.com/bookdata-newzealand

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