Last Saturday was the best-ever daily sale for The Grauny:

Last Saturday’s sales are said to have beaten the previous record, for the Saturday after September 11, 2001, by 29,000. The redesigned paper was helped by a DVD giveaway of The Madness of King George.

Having sunk to its lowest ABC circulation for 27 years this August, next week’s ABC figures for September are expected to show that the Berliner has brought an increase in sales of 60,000 a day.

That’s pretty darn impressive – to go from losing 15,000 readers a month to gaining 60,000 is no mean feat. It’s very nearly a 20% increase. But, of course, the real question is whether it can be sustained over the coming weeks and months. The Guardian have always been very open about their sales figures (even when they were in rapid decline), though, so I suspect they’ll tell us honestly whether or not it’s sustained.

It’s certainly a very promising start, even if not quite so big a relative bump as received by the Independent when they compacted themselves. It’ll be good to see how it pans out.