This week I decided that we should look at not only the New York Times Bestsellers list but also the USA Today bestseller. The lists are formatted differently with USA Today rating all books without categories like adult and children.
1 The Best of Me, Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing), $25.99
2 The Son of Neptune: The Heroes of Olympus, Book Two, Rick Riordan (Disney-Hyperion), $19.99
3 The Help, Kathryn Stockett (Penguin Group), $16.00
4 Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America, Bill O’Reilly, Martin Dugard (Henry Holt and Co.), $28.00
5 The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press), $8.99
6 The Affair, Lee Child (Delacorte Press), $13.99
7 Cross Fire, James Patterson (Vision), $9.99
8 Heaven Is for Real, Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent (Thomas Nelson), $16.99
9 The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), $12.99
10 Shock Wave, John Sandford (Putnam Adult), $27.95
11 Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press), $17.99
12 Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic), $17.99
13 The Mill River Recluse, Darcie Chan (Self-published via Amazon Digital Services), $.99
14 Lethal, Sandra Brown (Grand Central Publishing), $14.99
15 Boomerang, Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton), $25.95
16 The Death Cure, James Dashner (Delacorte Books for Young Readers), $17.99
17 Miracle Cure, Harlan Coben (Signet), $9.99
18 Seriously … I’m Kidding, Ellen DeGeneres (Grand Central Publishing), $26.99
19 Bad Blood, John Sandford (Berkley), $27.95
20 The Abbey, Chris Culver (Self-published via Amazon Digital Services), $.99
A quarter of the top 20 are Young Adult titles and almost 20% of the entire list is Young Adult or Children’s Novels. The main difference between the lists is that there are no categories on USA Today’s. So unlike the New York Times list you can easily compare sales for both Adult and Young Adult titles plus sales of individual books in a series. For example The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay are all in the top twenty for USA Today but they hold the #1 spot on the NYTs list in the children’s series category.
COMBINED PRINT & E-BOOK FICTION
- THE BEST OF ME, by Nicholas Sparks
- THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
- THE AFFAIR, by Lee Child
- THE MARRIAGE PLOT, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- THE MILL RIVER RECLUSE, by Darcie Chan
HARDCOVER FICTION
- THE BEST OF ME, by Nicholas Sparks
- THE MARRIAGE PLOT, by Jeffrey Eugenides
- SNUFF, by Terry Pratchett
- THE AFFAIR, by Lee Child
- SHOCK WAVE, by John Sandford
Children’s Chapter Books
- THE SON OF NEPTUNE, by Rick Riordan
- EVERY THING ON IT, by Shel Silverstein
- WONDERSTRUCK, by Brian Selznick
- MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN, by Ransom Riggs
- THE LOST HERO, by Rick Riordan
Children’s Series
- THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins
- THE MAZE RUNNER TRILOGY, by James Dashner
- DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney
- DORK DIARIES, by Rachel Renée Russell
- HUSH, HUSH SAGA, by Becca Fitzpatrick
No matter what list you look at Nicholas Sparks holds the top spot in the adult category and Rick Riordan maintains his dominance in the children’s category. James Dashner joins the series list with the release of Death Cure (the third and final book in his Maze Runner Trilogy).
So what do you think about the comparisons of the USA Today list and the New York Times list? Is there one that represents book sales better than another?