Amazon's Many 2013 Bestseller Lists

Publishers Lunch

As usual, Amazon has released a wealth of bestseller lists for the year. On their site they break out Top 100 lists of print books and ebooks for both adult titles as well as books for kids & teens. (The success of new adult and crossover YA makes that an increasingly hard distinction to draw.) Plus they announced top 20 lists that combine print and ebook sales. (Note that in all cases, Amazon counts only books newly-published in 2013 for these year-end lists.)

Their top 20 adult books are:

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

Three of those authors (Ward, Scott and Reed) were self-published, though the year lacked monster hits in ebook editions from self-published or "indie" published authors, unlike the past few years.

By our informal count 11 of the top 50 titles and 25 of the top 100 adult ebooks first published in 2013 were originally self-published, though 8 of those ebooks are now sold in editions from established publishers (mostly from S&S's Atria and HBG's Forever). Abbi Glines has three titles originally self-published through KDP in the top 10 of Amazon's kids and teens list, though she now has multiple deals with Simon & Schuster. Amazon notes that Sheryl Sandberg's LEAN IN is "the only book on the top 20 list to sell more print copies than Kindle editions."

Then there are the actual overall bestselling print books and ebooks of the year (regardless of when they were published), which you can check on Amazon's site at any point in time during the year, including now. That ebook list shows about 14 of the top 100 ebooks were self-published, comparable to what the list has shown the previous couple of years.