Bestseller Stat Shot
Believe it or not, we’re halfway through 2014, and YA titles dominate in this issue’s roundup of the bestselling books of the year to date (see p. 5). Spoiler alert: John Green and Veronica Roth have had a pretty good six months. With only a few adult titles among the year’s bestsellers, we wondered what all the grown-ups have been reading (other than The Fault in Our Stars and the Divergent trilogy). Below, we’ve listed the top 10 adult fiction and nonfiction bestsellers for the first half of the year.
Fiction
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | YTD sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | Little, Brown | 294,391 |
| 2 | Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn | Broadway | 260,552 |
| 3 | The Invention of Wings | Sue Monk Kidd | Viking | 245,777 |
| 4 | Never Go Back | Lee Child | Dell | 241,731 |
| 5 | Shadow Spell | Nora Roberts | Berkley | 239,820 |
| 6 | Orphan Train | Christina Baker Kline | Morrow | 225,696 |
| 7 | The Target | David Baldacci | Grand Central | 198,743 |
| 8 | Inferno | Dan Brown | Anchor | 195,571 |
| 9 | Daddy’s Gone A Hunting | Mary Higgins Clark | Pocket Books | 192,306 |
| 10 | Unlucky 13 | Patterson/Paetro | Little, Brown | 191,316 |
Nonfiction
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | YTD sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jesus Calling | Sarah Young | Thomas Nelson | 364,150 |
| 2 | Heaven Is for Real | Todd Burpo | Thomas Nelson | 342,384 |
| 3 | Heaven Is for Real (movie tie-in) | Todd Burpo | Thomas Nelson | 333,267 |
| 4 | Strengths Finder 2.0 | Tom Rath | Gallup | 253,850 |
| 5 | Duty | Robert M. Gates | Knopf | 219,018 |
| 6 | Killing Jesus | O’Reilly/Dugard | Henry Holt | 215,674 |
| 7 | Grain Brain | David Perlmutter | Little, Brown | 185,130 |
| 8 | The Five Love Languages | Gary Chapman | Northfield | 184,191 |
| 9 | Flash Boys | Michael Lewis | Norton | 177,641 |
| 10 | Things That Matter | Charles Krauthammer | Crown | 168,540 |
Source: Nielsen BookScan, unit sales through June 29, 2014
From the Newsletters
Remembering Walter Dean Myers, who died last week at age 76.
Get ready for San Diego Comic-Con 2014 with a show preview and more.
Blogs
Great first pages in literary history, including the start of A Better Angel by Chris Adrian. This, plus gems from our archives and book-world ephemera can be found on PW’s Tumblr.
The unlikely ways some people order books.
Podcasts
The More to Come crew talk with Matt Kindt and comics veteran Jim Starlin.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (Harper) was the most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week.
