First there was a piece in The Guardian The 100 bestselling books of 2018 it’s an article about 2018 publishing trends based on Nielsen Bookscan 31/12/17-8/12/18 and in the form of a list and some commentary. It inspired a Twitter stream with pie charts, and the two of them led to this Forbes article 7 Publishing Insights Revealed By Last Year's Top 100 Bestselling Books.
Note that The Guardian is a UK paper, so the 100 best sellers are *in the UK*. I'm going to try to find time to find an equivalent list for the U.S. Please do post i you find one.
Please actually read both articles and share your impressions, reflections, and take-aways.
Some things from me:
1. I have limited access to actual bookstores or libraries at present. I can't drive, so most of my books are obtained in digital form, and mostly from libraries via the 'net. I'm missing the displays that bookstores and libraries deliberately create, and the serendipity caused by shelf browsing, and talking to libraries, book sellers and patrons.
Yes, I do use GoodReads, and especially, LibraryThing, and the various browsing options from Overdrive and the like.
It's not the same. I'm relying more and more on people I know for book suggestions.
But the absence of physical displays means I completely missed the existence of a lot of the top sellers that I might have seen even if I didn't read, like health related books.
2. The non-fiction political books totally dominated last year, and in my impressions of 2017, the previous year as well.
3. Of the 100 bestselling books, I am waitlisted for three of them: Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, his Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and Gaiman's Norse Mythology.
4. This bit from the Guardian piece caught my eye:
As the Forbe's piece notes:
Women and people of color are still scant, if you compare the population to authors.
5. In terms of fiction, I mostly read SF/F. And mostly now, in ebook form. I still buy hardcovers if it's a book I love (C. J. Cherryh is an auto buy, for instance) and that seems to be a trend for SF/F and romance fiction for other readers, too. They're turning to ebooks. And I suspect but can't prove, much of those books are self-pubbed and/or audiobooks.
6. From the Forbe's article:
General fiction bestsellers usually move about 140,000 copies.
Note that The Guardian is a UK paper, so the 100 best sellers are *in the UK*. I'm going to try to find time to find an equivalent list for the U.S. Please do post i you find one.
Please actually read both articles and share your impressions, reflections, and take-aways.
Some things from me:
1. I have limited access to actual bookstores or libraries at present. I can't drive, so most of my books are obtained in digital form, and mostly from libraries via the 'net. I'm missing the displays that bookstores and libraries deliberately create, and the serendipity caused by shelf browsing, and talking to libraries, book sellers and patrons.
Yes, I do use GoodReads, and especially, LibraryThing, and the various browsing options from Overdrive and the like.
It's not the same. I'm relying more and more on people I know for book suggestions.
But the absence of physical displays means I completely missed the existence of a lot of the top sellers that I might have seen even if I didn't read, like health related books.
2. The non-fiction political books totally dominated last year, and in my impressions of 2017, the previous year as well.
3. Of the 100 bestselling books, I am waitlisted for three of them: Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, his Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and Gaiman's Norse Mythology.
4. This bit from the Guardian piece caught my eye:
As the Forbe's piece notes:
Women and people of color are still scant, if you compare the population to authors.
5. In terms of fiction, I mostly read SF/F. And mostly now, in ebook form. I still buy hardcovers if it's a book I love (C. J. Cherryh is an auto buy, for instance) and that seems to be a trend for SF/F and romance fiction for other readers, too. They're turning to ebooks. And I suspect but can't prove, much of those books are self-pubbed and/or audiobooks.
6. From the Forbe's article:
General fiction bestsellers usually move about 140,000 copies.
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