Amazon’s editors have announced their Best Books of the Year So Far lists. In addition to an overall Top 10 list, the etailer selects Top 10s for 12 categories of print books, and in a new twist, nine categories of Kindle books. Even on the Kindle lists, comprising 90 books in all, titles from traditional publishers dominate. The Kindle lists do include five Kindle singles (from Jon Krakauer, as well as titles by Cecelia Holland, Oliver Broudy, James Powell, and Mara Altman). The one sort-of self-published sort-of full-length title on the list is Seth Godin’s 96-page Poke the Box, from […]
Best of
The Year In Sales: Print Sales Decline Less Than eBooks Gained, As Retail Market Share Is Hit
Many in the trade were feeling relatively positive about business trends at the end of the year until the Borders news broke. For the 51 weeks of book sales, through Sunday, December 26, print book sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan were down 4.4 percent overall. (The comparable reporting period from 2009 ran through December 27.) With ebook sales at the major reporting houses rising from roughly 3 percent a year ago to approximately 9 percent or more in dollars (and likely even more by units) by the end of this year it’s likely that the decline in print sales […]
The Final List: Naming the Best of the Best of 2010
You’ve seen the dozens of lists we have linked to over the past six weeks or so and now here is the complete and final tabulation of the very best of the “best of 2010” lists. We have compiled lists from 30 sources in all (itemized at the bottom) to determine the consensus favorites shown below. For each title we show the total number of “votes” received, and this year in a new twist we have endeavored to list the editors and agents behind the books as well. For those who prefer a neater Top 10 overall list, we have […]
A Look Back At 2010
I’m usually not big on grand end-of-year lists and proclamations, but 2010 certainly has been the busiest, most complicated and most fascinating year since I stumbled my way into Publishers Lunch just over 10 years ago. It has been a challenge and a pleasure to lead the way with coverage of some of these complex new developments, including the first comprehensive story on the invention of the agency model and similar breaking pieces on agency’s sales tax complications, the agency/wholesale hybrid model, the antitrust investigation in Texas, and more. Every year, our “person of the year” is really you, our […]
More Top Tens, from EW and the San Francisco Chronicle
We’ll have our final Best of the Best of 2010 compilation list for you shortly. In the meantime, more votes were cast by Entertainment Weekly and the SF Chronicle, below: 1. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall 2. Room, Emma Donoghue 3. 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, Garry Trudeau 4. The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer 5. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray 6. One Day, David Nicholls 7. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes 8. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman 9. Rich Boy, Sharon Pomerantz 10. The Surrendered, Chang-rae Lee EW And the SF Chronicle picks: Fiction Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen Room, by Emma Donoghue Selected Stories, by […]
More Lists
Now John Freeman picks his 5 favorite debuts for NPR. LAT critic David Ulin names his 10 favorites reads of the year. Critic and reporter Sarah Weinman tallies her favorites crime novels of the year, along with other favorite reads. The UK’s Telegraph posts their top 10 list.