Pro-Remain newspaper the New European is thought to have sold more than 40,000 copies of its launch edition, more than the short-lived national the New Day when it was shut by publisher Trinity Mirror.

The so-called “pop-up” title, which went from drawing board to newsstand in just nine days, could well see its its initial four-issue run extended off the back of the better-than-hoped start.

Sales of the second issue, which hit newsstands last Friday, will be known next week but the newspaper’s bosses hope it will remain high in part thanks to the huge publicity from an Alistair Campbell article calling for a second EU referendum.

“Sales are better than we had anticipated and it provides us with some confidence that we were right to put out a publishing vehicle based on a zeitgeist,” said Jeff Henry, the chief executive of Archant, the Norwich-based regional publisher that launched the title. “Some have said print is dead. No it’s most certainly not. It has made money from the get-go. It is a profitable endeavour.”

Trinity Mirror’s short-lived national title the New Day had targeted a reader base of 200,000 but sales sank rapidly to just over 30,000 and it was shut after just two months.

“You don’t need a £5m marketing budget and a three-year plan to get a product into the nation’s mindset if the topic is strong enough,” says Matt Kelly, Archant’s content chief and launch editor of the New European.

Kelly says the New European and the New Day have totally different models.

“It is definitely a product of the moment,” he says. “When that moment passes then so too will the paper. That s the heart of this idea of pop-up publishing. It is a fairly unique set of circumstances. What is important is the knowledge that you can do it if there is an opportunity.”

Henry would not reveal Archant’s budget for the New European, other than to point out that it has a marketing budget of just £10,000.

However, two years ago Newsquest launched pro-Independence paper the National following the Scottish referendum. After an early sales frenzy, the first run was 100,000 copies, the title has settled down at between 10,000 and 15,000 sales.

This was the level that management had always identified as a breakeven sales level. It is likely that Archant too would need to sell such numbers to make the New European viable as a print product.

The third edition, which will contain contributions from Howard Jacobson, Hardeep Singh Kohli and A C Grayling, will extend distribution to parts of Scotland and Wales.

Henry, a former senior executive at ITV, says theorising on the title’s survival level is a moot point as it was only ever envisaged to run to four issues, although he admits it may live longer.

“It may only have a shelf life of four editions, it might not,” he said. “We will decide what to do probably between the third and fourth editions.”