The (Bookselling) Force Awakens

The box office record-shattering debut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is driving its own wave of bestselling tie-in books. Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Star Wars continues its run on our Hardcover Fiction list, landing this week at #17. It has plenty of company: eight Star Wars titles feature among the week’s 100 bestselling books across all categories. Here’s how they fared:

Title Author Publisher Unit Sales
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary Pablo Hidalgo DK 39,633
Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know Bray/Horton DK 23,647
Star Wars The Force Awakens: Before the Awakening Greg Rucka Disney/Lucasfilm 22,461
Star Wars: 5-Minute Star Wars Stories - Disney/Lucasfilm 20,463
The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Phil Szostak Abrams 18,465
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Incredible Cross-Sections Fry/Remillard DK 17,471
Star Wars Electronic Reader - Phoenix International 15,510
Art of Coloring: Star Wars Saunier-Talec/Vallet Disney Editions 15,127

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

Holiday Hits

We took a look at the books that sold the most between Black Friday and the end of the year, to see what the big titles were for this year’s holiday gift-buying season. Coloring books and Star Wars tie-ins (more on both of those above and below) added some variety to the stalwart bestsellers that usually dominate the charts, but the wild card among the season’s top titles ended up being a joke book for kids. Here are the season’s top five titles.

Title Author Publisher Unit Sales
Old School (Wimpy Kid #10) Jeff Kinney Abrams/Amulet 821,555
Lost Ocean Johanna Basford Penguin 335,620
Killing Reagan O’Reilly/Dugard Holt 323,121
Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids Rob Elliott Revell 290,334
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime Ree Drummond Morrow 278,737

*Print unit sales are from Nov. 23–Dec. 27

Color Me Christmas

Coloring books were the big trend of the year, and definitely the big gift item of the season. A quick look at our Paperback list shows just how huge the category has become: 13 of the 25 books on the list are coloring books, including the top five, clearing a combined total of more than 325K print units last week. Coloring books also appear on our Overall list as well as our Hardcover Nonfiction list and Children’s Picture Book list.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 Old School (Wimpy Kid #10) Jeff Kinney Abrams 133,037
2 Lost Ocean Johanna Basford Penguin 96,406
3 Killing Reagan O’Reilly/Dugard Holt 84,347
4 Enchanted Forest Johanna Basford Laurence King 64,263
5 Rogue Lawyer John Grisham Doubleday 63,815
6 The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime Ree Drummond Morrow 62,824
7 Secret Garden Johanna Basford Laurence King 60,657
8 Cross Justice James Patterson Little, Brown 57,090
9 Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids Rob Elliott Revell 55,810
10 Guinness World Records 2016 – Guinness World Records 52,233

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.