Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, out June 10, was the most talked about book on social media last month. Clinton’s memoir, which also topped our chart in May, received a “lot of comments during its early June release and garnered even more comments at the end of the month, when it became apparent that the book was not meeting sales expectations,” according to Jeff Costello, v-p of CoverCake, which tracks references to titles on social media.
Titles that showed up in the mainstream news cycle in June as a result of the Hachette/Amazon standoff also lit up social media. J.K. Rowling’s The Silkworm (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), came in at #2. In addition to the name-recognition generated by its splashy author, the book also attracted attention thanks to its position at the center of the industry scuffle (the novel was published in the U.S. by Hachette’s Mulholland Books and was unavailable for preorder in the weeks leading up to its June 19 release).
Edan Lepucki’s debut novel, California, landed at #7 after Sherman Alexie’s June 4 appearance on the Colbert Report, during which the writer touted the book, also a Hachette title. Stephen Colbert implored viewers to purchase it through indie Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., since it is unavailable for preorder on Amazon (the book goes on sale July 8).
The books behind popular movie adaptations also dominated online chatter. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars was the fifth most talked-about book on the list, following the box office success of its June 6 film release. Divergent, the first installment of Veronica Roth’s eponymous series, continues to feed online conversations, coming in behind Green at #6. The movie of the same name hit theaters in March.
Other new books on the list included Janet Evanovich’s Top Secret Twenty-One, the latest in her Stephanie Plum series, at #3, and director John Waters’s account of his trek across America, Carsick, which came in at #9. Jennifer Weiner’s newest, All Fall Down, sat at #10—the book had the most commentary from women, who generated 68% of the comments about the novel.
CoverCake’s Top 10 Books in Social Media, June 2014
| Rank | Title | Author | BookScan* | Scale** | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hard Choices | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 4 | 10 | 50% | 50% |
| 2 | The Silkworm | Robert Galbraith | 15 | 8 | 39 | 61 |
| 3 | Top Secret Twenty-One | Janet Evanovich | 2 | 7 | 41 | 59 |
| 4 | Mr. Mercedes | Stephen King | 7 | 6 | 49 | 51 |
| 5 | The Fault in Our Stars | John Green | 1 | 6 | 36 | 64 |
| 6 | Divergent | Veronica Roth | 13 | 5 | 41 | 59 |
| 7 | California | Edan Lepucki | – | 3 | 51 | 49 |
| 8 | Think Like a Freak | Steven D. Levitt | 77 | 2 | 56 | 44 |
| 9 | Carsick | John Waters | – | 2 | 51 | 49 |
| 10 | All Fall Down | Jennifer Weiner | 29 | 1 | 32 | 68 |
* For the week ended June 22. A dash (–) indicates that the book did not appear among nielsen bookscan’s top 100 bestselling titles.
** Number of comments about the book in question for every 10 comments about the #1 title.
