From Publishing Perspectives:
The arrival in July of Amazon Charts in the UK is providing an interesting point of year-end comparison. As Publishing Perspectives readers will recall, the States had had Amazon Charts since mid-May of 2017.
And while it’s good to remember that the 2019 summary for the UK doesn’t cover a full year, the contrasts in popularity and sales patterns are interesting.
The Amazon Charts, updated weekly, list the Top 20 digital titles in fiction and nonfiction by “most read” and “most sold,” which creates some interesting discrepancies in itself.
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As the Amazon UK country director in books Simon Johnson recently said to The Bookseller’s Kiera O’Brien, the Charts’ “This Year in Books” reports provide the most comprehensive look at what their relevant markets have been “reading and loving in 2019” because the charts “take into account ebooks read on Kindle and audiobooks from Audio.”
It’s of course Amazon’s digital access, of course, that makes it possible for the Amazon Charts to reveal not only what’s being sold (in all formats), but also what’s actually being read, in digital formats.
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In the States, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Penguin Group / GP Putnam’s Sons, 2018) had the longest streak–16 weeks–of any book at No. 1 on both the most sold and most read fiction lists in 2019.
In the United Kingdom, we see a split, and a striking one.
In the UK, the most sold work of fiction per the Amazon Charts was Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Bonnier / Zaffre, 2018).
And in terms of most read work of fiction on the British Amazon Charts, our British friends are still just wild about You Know Who: JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Bloomsbury, 2003) topped the most read fiction chart, though it was originally published 16 years ago.
In fact, four of the Top Five most read works of fiction on the UK’s Amazon Charts are Rowling’s: Phoenix (No. 1), Philosopher’s Stone (No. 3), Goblet of Fire (No. 4), and Deathly Hallows. At No. 2, Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth is the one non-Rowling most read fiction entry, but it’s interesting to note that all five of the top titles in this category are in the young readers’ and YA sector.
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
PG is embedding PDF screenshots some of Amazon’s UK Charts. At the bottom, you should see a navigation bar that permits you to go through the entire list.
These are large files. He’ll apologize in advance if you have problems seeing them. You can access the US version of Amazon Charts here, and the UK version here.
Most Sold – UK – 2019 – Fiction
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a1Most Sold Fiction _ Amazon Charts.
Most Read – UK – 2019 – Fiction
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a1 Most Read Fiction _ Amazon Charts.
Most Sold – UK – 2019 – Non-Fiction
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a1 most sold non-fiction.
Most Read – UK – 2019 – Non-Fiction
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a1 Most Read Nonfiction _ Amazon Charts