J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit continues as the #1 book on social media, according to CoverCake, a company that uses analytical tools to track what’s trending on social media, its popularity obviously being driven by the movie. Fifty Shades of Grey, which had dropped several spots in November, had a big resurgence to the #2 slot in December, due to the trilogy and its author getting exposure in virtually every 2012 recap article, according to Jeff Costello, v-p of sales at CoverCake: “We noticed a lot of women talking about the book as a holiday gift idea.”
CoverCake tracked more comments on Les Misérables (at #4) than any other book, Costello said, but most of the comments were filtered out of CoverCake’s results because they were “solely about the movie or the musical and didn’t mention the book.” But he also noted, “It is amazing that a book that was first published 150 years ago can still make the top 10 for the month.” Life of Pi continued at #3 in December—“a huge chunk of people that talk about the movie also talk about how much they liked the book”—and Gone Girl, still at #8 in December, “continues to amaze us. People love this book and just keep talking about it,” he said.
Costello also took note of Glenn Beck’s Agenda 21 at #7, “new to the list and the only book that drew more male comments than female.” Proof of Heaven, at #9, “was mentioned as a great holiday gift idea, which drove it back into the top 10.” And The Edge of Never “struck a chord with people in the romance category” and is getting “a lot of conversation”; it had the highest percentage of females (89%) talking about it.
Be sure to check out CoverCake’s monthly feature on what books people are talking about on social media, which appears every month in the pages of PW, as well as online.
| CoverCake’s Top 10 Books in Social Media, December 2012 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Title | Author | Scale* | Male | Female |
| 1 | The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | 10 | 44% | 56% |
| 2 | Fifty Shades of Grey | E.L. James | 8 | 19 | 81 |
| 3 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel | 8 | 38 | 62 |
| 4 | Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | 6 | 23 | 77 |
| 5 | Catching Fire | Suzanne Collins | 6 | 22 | 78 |
| 6 | Mockingjay | Suzanne Collins | 5 | 29 | 71 |
| 7 | Agenda 21 | Glenn Beck | 3 | 55 | 45 |
| 8 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | 2 | 39 | 61 |
| 9 | Proof of Heaven | Eben Alexander | 2 | 43 | 57 |
| 10 | The Edge of Never | J.A. Redmerski | 1 | 11 | 89 |
*How many conversations took place about the book in question for every 10 comments about book #1
