Amazon’s weekly charts
Amazon has started bringing out weekly book charts. The top 20 books sold, and the top 20 books read
They do fiction and non-fiction. You can find them at https://www.amazon.com/charts.
Looking at the fiction lists, there are few surprises in the Books Sold. These are the books you see in the display area of any bookshop. The bestsellers are the same online and off. Included among these are the books that have television or movie adaptions coming out soon. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
There is one unexpected (to me) entrant. Dr Suess’s, Oh, The Places You’ll Go comes in at number eight.
It’s when you get to the Books Read list that the results start to differ. Putting aside the question of how Amazon knows what you’re reading—Big Brother is definitely watching us—the results are interesting.
Here’s the full May 14 list of the 20 most books read on Amazon.
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The Fix, by David Baldacci
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Beneath a Scarlet Sky, by Mark Sullivan
Golden Prey, by John Sandford
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling
It, by Stephen King
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling
16th Seduction, by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty
Beach Lawyer, by Avery Duff
Dead Certain, by Adam Mitzner
A Court of Wings and Ruin, by Sarah J. Maas
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
The Black Book, by James Patterson & David Ellis
Sure, the bestsellers are in there, but look how many Harry Potter books there are. Five.
There also looks to be a slight lag on buying books and reading them. I’m sure if we had charts from the previous weeks we’d see authors like Sarah J. Maas on the Books Sold list.
Movie/television adaptions The Handmaid’s Tale and American Gods are joined by Stephen King’s It. Again, because we don’t have the prior week charts we can’t tell if these are new readers reading books they have just bought, or if readers who already owned the book are rereading it. I suspect it’s the latter.
It’s Harry Potter that’s the interesting. I know J. K. Rowling still sells a lot of books, but I think a lot of those reads are rereads. People who own the books already, have read them before, and are re-reading them.
It’s what we do, as readers, with a book we like.
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