Amazon announced their bestselling books of the year, which always makes for some interesting analysis. The top-selling non-Fifty Shades books were Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (the No. 2 adult print seller–and the No. 4 ebook) and Mark Owen’s No Easy Day (the No. 3 adult ebook). But those “announced” lists comprise “only first editions published in 2012.) Separate, less-publicized lists displayed on the site also show you their actual bestsellers for the year, regardless of the year in which those books were first published (e.g. the way conventional bestseller lists track books). On those lists, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books […]
Bestseller Radar
More NYT Bestseller List Changes, As YA and Middle Grade Get Separate Lists
The New York Times will split its children’s Chapter Book bestseller lists into separate middle grade and young adult lists beginning with the December 16 issue (though the lists will be online Friday and were sent around to the trade last night.) Those two lists, as well as the series bestseller lists, will reflect sales across all platforms, including ebooks. (Author John Green has posted a screenshot of the YA and middle grade lists here.) The picture books bestseller list, however, will concentrate on hardcover unit sales only. In a note to publishers sent this week the NYT adds: “We […]
Digital Book World Launches Aggregated eBook Bestseller List
Digital Book World has launched a weekly set of ebook bestseller lists that aggregates the previous full week’s sales ranking data from Amazon, Nook, Google, Kobo and Sony into an overall list of the top 25 selling books, as well as four additional top 10 lists organized by price tiers: free to $2.99, $3 to $7.99, $8 to $9.99, and $10 and up. The bestseller lists, which will appear every Monday, were developed for DBW by Iobyte Solutions and seek to address the lack of differentiation between inexpensive ebooks — either self-published or priced promotionally for a limited time — […]
Sales After Oprah Endorsement Are Good, But Are They Wild?
The launch of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 on May 30 with the selection of Cheryl Strayed’s WILD–and national media attention for Oprah’s return to book recommendations–has boosted the book’s profile and sales for certain. But will the cable + online Oprah profile come anywhere close to the impact of her syndicated television book endorsements? For the sales week ending June 10, Nielsen Bookscan reports print book sales of approximately 11,300 copies, up roughly 7,700 units from the prior week (with weekly sales having ranged from 3,100 to 4,400 copies over the previous four weeks). That is the book’s best week […]
Scholastic Adds 12.5 Million Units of Hunger Games In 2012
Scholastic says that the three Hunger Games titles have over 36.5 million units in print in the US: over 17.5 million copies of THE HUNGER GAMES; 10 million copies of CATCHING FIRE; and 9 million copies of Mockingjay. In January the publisher said they had 24 million units in print, so they have shipped and/or sold 12.5 million units so far in 2012. That squares roughly with the figures in Scholastic’s recent quarterly earnings report on March 15. Trade book sales had jumped from $43.5 million up to $112 million, largely on the strength of Hunger Games sales. That $68.5 […]
How Do eBooks Change the 2011 Bestsellers?
USA Today has published their list of the top 100 bestsellers for 2011. As the only major list that has used combined print and ebook data for the entire year, they provide the best look at the true, overall bestsellers for the year. We wondered how much the inclusion of ebook sales changes the nature of the year’s top-selling books. The answer, in a word, is: barely. Below are comparisons of USA Today’s top 15 adult fiction and nonfiction books (with print and ebook sales combined; the actual USA top 100 rank is in parentheses) versus Nielsen Bookscan’s top 15 […]