The New York Times announced changes to its bestseller lists, effective online on April 1 and in print on April 15. The Times will add two lists to their audio bestsellers: Children’s, with 15 titles, and Audio Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous, with 10 titles. The Times already lists Audio Fiction and Nonfiction bestsellers. In addition, the paper will do away with the mass market bestseller list and move the paperback nonfiction list to monthly instead of weekly, “to better align with current market trends.”
Bestseller Radar
2025: The New Bestsellers
Two of the biggest books of 2025 were technically published in December 2024—Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory (Hay House, 12/24/24) and Callie Hart’s Quicksilver (Forever, 12/3/24). They didn’t make our list of the biggest new books last year, but continued going strong enough this year to deserve mention here. In fact, The Let Them Theory was the top-selling print title of 2025 with 2.8 million units sold. Quicksilver came in at 34 in Circana Bookscan’s top 200. Suzanne Collins’ addition to the Hunger Games universe was the top newly-published 2025 book of the year, selling more than 2 million […]
The New Bestsellers of 2024
Romance, romantasy, and domestic suspense dominated the bestselling books of 2024: Twenty percent of the top 200 print books according to Circana Bookscan–as of December 28–were written by four authors, with 16 spots taken by Sarah J. Maas, 11 by Freida McFadden, 8 by Ana Huang, and 6 by Colleen Hoover. The biggest title of the year was Kristin Hannah’s The Women, which sold 1.49 million copies since publishing in February. Frontlist titles make up 57 of the top 200, or about 29 percent–in line with last year’s list and the broader trend that has backlist comprising about 70 percent […]
The New List For June 13
Last week, we announced our bestseller list, The New List, which exclusively tracks new releases based on Circana Bookscan data. With lists updating on Fridays, we’ll bring you highlights weekly in Lunch, along with the complete fiction and nonfiction hardcover lists. For the week ending June 8, Eruption by Michael Crichton tops the hardcover nonfiction list, with Camino Ghosts by John Grisham at No. 2 (it was No. 1 the previous week). Stephen King’s stories You Like It Darker: Stories was in third. The title that has been on the list longest is Think Twice by Harlan Coben, now tenth, which […]
Introducing The New List
Backlist titles increasingly dominate the publishing landscape, comprising approximately 70 percent of all print book sales. The same statistic is true for top selling titles—of the top 200 books in 2022 and 2023, about 70 percent were published more than a year prior. Those older titles monopolize media bestseller lists, including the New York Times, leaving unrecognized many of the books that publishing staff are working on right now. But the original purpose of bestseller lists was to help readers recognize the hot new titles in the market. To help highlight which new titles are selling, we’re proud to announce […]
Tik Tok Shop Makes Its Own Bestsellers
The NYT finds Keila Shaheen’s The Shadow Work Journal — republished last month by Simon & Schuster’s Primero Sueño — one of at least a handful of homegrown TikTok Shop bestsellers. The Atlantic wrote about the book last September, when it was said to have sold 290,000 units through TikTokShop since April, “even as experts question its approach—and the author’s credentials.” Earlier this year, Shaheen reached a five-book, 50/50 profit-share deal with S&S, accompanied by a seven-figure advance, represented by Rebecca Gradinger and Albert Lee at UTA. The expanded S&S trade paperback has sold a little under 22,000 copies since […]