‘Catching Fire’ Red-Hot On Social Media

Thanks to the warm critical reception and box-office domination of the film adaptation of Catching Fire, released November 22 and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, the second book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy was the most-talked-about book on social media for the month of November.

“This book dominated the social landscape more than any other book we’ve ever tracked,” said Jeff Costello, v-p of CoverCake, which measures how books are faring on social media. For the second month in a row, CoverCake saw record-breaking interest in a single title. Catching Fire raked in double the comments of the second-place book, Allegiant by Veronica Roth. The final installment in Roth’s popular Divergent series dominated online commentary in October. Like Catching Fire in November, Allegiant, in October, was the subject of twice as many social media conversations than the second most-buzzed-about book that month.

In another example of the page-to-screen effect, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief enjoyed a resurgence in social media attention, coming in at #3 on the CoverCake list, thanks to the release of the movie version of the novel on November 8.

For most of the titles on the list, women generated more online chatter than men. However, men initiated 61% of the social media conversations about Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Jesus, and 62% of the commentary on Mitch Albom’s The First Phone Call From Heaven, which was released November 12.

CoverCake's Top 10 Books in Social Media, November 2013

* How many conversations took place for every 10 comments about book #1. Data provided by CoverCake.