In hardcover, the usual suspects, and more
Mar 21, 2011 page: 1 | 2 | 3
Click over to the rest of our Facts & Figures 2011 Coverage
Paperbacks | Children's Books | E-books
What's new in the hardcover fiction bestsellers of 2010? Very little. Almost every author in the fiction top 30 has been on these charts in previous years—most several times. The sole exception is the #1 fiction bestseller, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, with sales of 1.9 million. Stieg Larsson enjoyed a quadruple play, heading fiction, mass market, trade paper, and an e-book list of bestsellers.
Still, a number of veteran bestselling novelists dominate. Chief among them is James Patterson. With his stable of coauthors, he managed to rack up six of the top 25 fiction bestsellers, with combined sales of 3,332,263. Clive Cussler had four bestsellers in 2010, with combined sales of 1,006,132; Nora Roberts had three, with combined sales of 900,000 copies. And the bestselling female author last year was Janet Evanovich; she had two of the top 15 bestsellers, with sales of more than 1.5 million.
The only novel to make a second appearance in the top 15 is Kathryn Stockett's The Help. A debut fiction hitting the one million–plus sales mark for the second year in a row, it is also the only hardcover that did not miss a single showing on the 2010 weekly charts. First novels that score are always an inspiration, and four others achieved sales of more than 100,000 last year—Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War; The Imperfectionists; Major Pettigrew's Last Stand; and The Postmistress. Each enjoyed rave reviews, proving that there is still room for quality in this competitive game.
What has changed dramatically for bestsellers, including books by list veterans, is that fewer books have double-digit tenure on the weekly charts, revealing the greater difficulty in getting the higher annual sales figures of years past. In 2010, three hardcover fiction titles sold more than one million copies, and five sold more than 750,000 copies. The year before, six books went over the million mark and six more sold 750,000+ copies. In fact, each year during the past decade, there were at least six (and often eight) books with one million–plus sales.
There were 126 works of fiction that claimed sales of more than 100,000, only slightly fewer than the 130 in 2009, but 19% fewer than the 156 in 2008. Nonfiction titles with sales of more than 100,000 in 2010 sales were up, with 108 titles, more than the 91 in 2009, but fewer than the 132 in 2008.
Almost all of the nonfiction books are by familiar names from outside of the book publishing arena, many by authors who have landed on PW's annual charts in previous years. Media personalities abound—Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly, and Chelsea Handler, to name just a few. Politicians and books about them were plentiful on the bestseller charts, but the biggest victory can be claimed by George W. Bush. Decision Points garnered good reviews and record-breaking sales; it is the only 2010 nonfiction title to sell more than one million copies, 2,653,565, to be exact. Crown claimed sales of 775,000 in the title's first week and noted that it was the biggest opening of any Random House title since 2004. The former first lady Laura Bush also landed in the top 15, with sales of more than 600,000 copies for Spoken from the Heart.
Other politicians made the top 15 list. It was Sarah Palin's second visit; in 2010 she made it to #5, with sales of 797,955 for America by Heart; a year earlier she topped the charts with sales of more than 2,670,000 for Going Rogue. There were no books by Obama this year, but if you peruse the nonfiction list, you will find many about him. Political memoirs by Karl Rove and Mitt Romney made the charts as did ones written by rock star Keith Richards and hip-hop star Jay-Z. Food Network star Ina Garten landed among the top 15, and many of her cooking colleagues were on the 2010 charts.
Then there was that bestseller, Autobiography of Mark Twain, whose author gave explicit instructions not to publish his book until 100 years after his death. Patience to all authors who are waiting for publication—your time may come.
The Usual Disclaimer
As in previous years, all the calculations on the following pages are based on shipped-and-billed figures supplied by publishers for new books with sales of 100,000+; all reflect only 2010 domestic retail sales for print books (one title, marked with a #, was published in 2009). We asked publishers to take into account returns through February 15; it would be safe to assume that not all did. Sales figures on these pages should not be considered final. For many books, especially those published in the final third of the year, returns were not yet calculated.
The figures for all books listed marked with a star (*)—hardcover, paperback, and e-books—were submitted to PW in confidence, for use in placing titles on the lists. Those numbers are rounded down to indicate their relationship to figures for other titles; in several cases the sales figures were omitted entirely.
Publishing news from across the Web
In an open letter to the DoJ published on Digital Book World, agent Simon Lipskar says the government has "a fatally flawed understanding of the economics and history of the emerging e-book industry."
The publisher has reduced the retail prices of e-books to the level of the paperback equivalents of about 2,000 literary titles published in hardback.
Inside University of Nebraska's Bison Books, which publishes four to eight hardcore baseball books per year.
The publisher is trying to handle its debt load.
| Guilty Wives | Audio Fiction |
| Killing Lincoln (unabr.) | Audio Nonfiction |
| Serpent's Shadow | Children's Fiction |
| Duckling Gets a Cookie!? | Children's Picture Book |
| Hunger Games | Children's Series & Tie-ins |
| Blue Exorcist, Volume 3 | Graphic Novels |
| Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel | Hardcover Fiction |
| Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Hardcover Nonfiction |
| The Lucky One | Mass Market Paper |
| Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy | Trade Paper |
