More Surprises From Amazon’s 2013 Best-Seller List

2013

Another year has gone by — and Amazon’s released a fascinating new list revealing which books which most popular in 2013. But they’re not just looking at the Kindle best-sellers (or the print best-sellers). Amazon’s combined print and ebook sales, and calculated which books were read more than any others last year — regardless of their format!

For a shortuct to Amazon’s list, point your browser to
tinyurl.com/AmazonOverallBestsellers


Here’s Amazon’s list of the 20 best-selling books of 2013.

1. Inferno by Dan Brown
2. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
3. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
4. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
5. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
6. The Hit by David Baldacci
7. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
8. Entwined with You by Sylvia Day
9. Never Go Back by Lee Child
10. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
11. Alex Cross, Run by James Patterson
12. Doctor Sleep> by Stephen King
13. 12th of Never by James Patterson
14. Damaged: The Ferro Family by H.M. Ward
15. Killing Jesus: A History by Bill O’Reilly
16. Second Honeymoon by James Patterson
17. Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts
18. The Billionaire’s Obsession: The Complete Collection by J.S. Scott
19. Surrender Your Love by J.C. Reed
20. Six Years by Harlan Coben

The first thing you notice is that James Patterson is really popular. He wrote four of the 20 most popular titles of 2013. But the second thing you notice is he’s not nearly as popular in print. Just one of those four books made it onto Amazon’s list of the top 100 best-selling print books of 201312th of Never (which came in at #77).

And yet six James Patterson titles are among Amazon’s top 100 best-selling Kindle ebooks of 2013. In fact, all six of them are in the top 60, and three of them made it into the top 15 !


Alex Cross, Run (#10)
12th of Never (Women’s Murder Club) (#12)
Second Honeymoon (#13)
Gone (Michael Bennett) (#40)
Mistress (#53)
Private Berlin (#55)


The moral of the story is probably that 2013 was a good year for James Patterson. He even landed another book on Amazon’s list of the best-sellers in their “Kids & Teens” category — a mystery novel titled Confessions: The Private School Murders. Maybe Amazon moved it onto their “Kids & Teens” list to try to free up a spot for another author who wasn’t James Patterson. But another message might be that in order to make it onto Amazon’s best-seller list — you had to sell a lot of Kindle ebooks.

I took another look at Amazon’s list of the best-selling Kindle ebooks of 2013, which offers convincing proof about the importance of ebooks sales. In fact, for a moment, I had to confirm that I was reading the right list, because Amazon’s list of Kindle ebook best-sellers is nearly identical to Amazon’s list of the overall bestsellers for 2013. In many cases, a book ranked much lower on Amazon’s list of print best-sellers — but still earned a high rank on the overall list because of its high position on the list of the best-selling Kindle ebooks. And amazingly, some of their overall best-selling titles for the year didn’t even appear anywhere on Amazon’s list of the top 100 best-selling print titles.

Here’s Amazon’s list of the best-selling Kindle ebooks of 2013

1 Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon) by Dan Brown
                                   [#1 on Overall list]
                                   [#2 on Print list]

2. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
                                   [#4 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

3. The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith
                                   [#3 on Overall list]
                                   [#12 on Print list]

4. And the Mountains Echoed: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini
                                   [#2 on Overall list]
                                   [#4 on Print list]

5. The Hit (Will Robie) by David Baldacci
                                   [#6 on Overall list]
                                   [#40 on Print list]

6. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
                                   [#7 on Overall list]
                                   [#15 on Print list]

7. Entwined with You (A Crossfire Novel) by Sylvia Day
                                   [#8 on Overall list]
                                   [#24 on Print list]

8. Never Go Back: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
                                   [#9 on Overall list]
                                   [#38 on Print list]

9. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
                                   [#10 on Overall list]
                                   [#53 on Print list]

10. Alex Cross, Run by James Patterson
                                   [#11 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

11. Damaged: The Ferro Family by H.M. Ward
                                   [#14 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

12. 12th of Never (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson
                                   [#13 on Overall list]
                                   [#65 on Print list]

13. Second Honeymoon by James Patterson
                                   [#16 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

14. The Billionaire’s Obsession: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Mine For Tonight, Mine For Now, Mine Forever, Mine Completely) by J.S. Scott
                                   [#18 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

15. Surrender Your Love by J.C. Reed
                                   [#19 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

16. The Bet by Rachel Van Dyken
                                   [Not in Overall top 20]
                                   [Not on Print list]

17. Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts
                                   [#17 on Overall list]
                                   [Not on Print list]

18. Six Years by Harlan Coben
                                   [#10 on Overall list]
                                   [#92 on print list]

19. Falling Into You by Jasinda Wilder
                                   [Not in Overall top 20]
                                   [Not on print list]

20. High Heat: A Jack Reacher Novella by Lee Child
                                   [Not in Overall top 20]
                                   [Not on print list]


For a shortcut to Amazon’s lists, point your browser to
http://tinyurl.com/AmazonBooks2013

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