Although there were still a few days left in the 2010 selling season at press time, the clear winners for the year are already in: in nonfiction the unlikely combination of George Bush, Chelsea Handler, and Elizabeth Gilbert ruled Nielsen BookScan's nonfiction list, while Stieg Larsson, in a mix of hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback, took five of the top 10 fiction spots. In the children's category, four authors were responsible for the 10 bestselling titles, while the audiobook bestsellers came from a wider range of authors.

Bush's Decision Points was popular enough that it not only easily topped the nonfiction charts in 2010, with more than 1.6 million copies sold in the outlets tracked by BookScan, but it led audiobook sales as well. The film version of Eat, Pray, Love helped keep Gilbert's book high on the charts, with the movie tie-in edition alone selling 516,000 copies. Handler's two top 10 titles, one each in hardcover (Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang) and trade paper (Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea) combined to sell 971,000 copies in the outlets tracked by BookScan last year. Two nonfiction titles from houses outside of the big six hit the BookScan top 10—Michael Lewis's The Big Short, published by Norton, and Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath, from Gallup Press.

Random House has already said that it expects to sell more than 14 million copies of Larsson's Millennium trilogy in all formats in 2010, and the five top-selling Larsson print titles on the BookScan fiction list sold over seven million copies. The audiobook editions of the three Larsson novels added another 125,000 in sales. The one fiction title among the top 10 BookScan bestsellers not from a major house was A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, published by Algonquin, which sold 634,000 copies.

In children's, Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins managed to place the second and third bestselling titles on the BookScan list, but then it was all Jeff Kinney and Rick Riordan. Kinney sold more than 3.7 million copies of his four Wimpy Kid novels, and Riordan sold just under 2.7 million copies of his four bestsellers, which received a boost from the February movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians.


Adult Fiction Bestsellers

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Vintage. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 2,188,000
2. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. Vintage. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 1,463,000
3. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson. Knopf. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 1,458,000
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Putnam/Amy Einhorn. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 1,299,000
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Vintage. Format: MM. 2010 Sales: 1,132,000
6. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. Vintage. Format: MM. 2010 Sales: 829,000
7. Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Simon & Schuster. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 810,000
8. The Confession by John Grisham. Doubleday. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 651,000
9. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. Algonquin. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 634,000
10. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Harper Paperbacks. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 577,000

Adult Nonfiction Bestsellers

1. Decision Points by George W. Bush. Crown. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 1,649,000
2. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin Books. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 1,035,000
3. Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. Scribner. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 644,000
4. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin Books. Format: TP. (movie tie-in). 2010 Sales: 516,000
5. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (the Book) by Jon Stewart. Grand Central. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 507,000
6. Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler. Grand Central. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 505,000
7. Sh*T My Dad Says by Justin Halpern. HC/It Books. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 482,000
8. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler. Simon Spotlight Entertainment. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 466,000
9. The Big Short by Michael Lewis. W. W. Norton. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 458,000
10. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Gallup Press. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 454,000

Children's Bestsellers

1. The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney. Amulet Books. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 1,626,000
2. The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 1,058,000
3. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. Scholastic Press. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 780,000
4. The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney. Abrams/Amulet. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 746,000
5. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. Disney-Hyperion. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 714,000
6. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book by Jeff Kinney. Abrams/Amulet Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 694,000
7. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Miramax Books. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 663,000
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Amulet Books. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 659,000
9. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan. Hyperion. Format: TP. 2010 Sales: 659,000
10. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. Hyperion. Format: HC. 2010 Sales: 630,000

Audio Bestsellers

1. Decision Points (abr.) by George W. Bush. Random House Audio. 2010 Sales: 83,000
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Random House Audio. 2010 Sales: 53,000
3. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. HarperCollins. 2010 Sales: 49,000
4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson. Random House Audio. 2010 Sales: 39,000
5. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. Random House Audio. 2010 Sales: 33,000
6. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Penguin Audiobooks. 2010 Sales: 31,000
7. The Secret (unabr.) by Rhonda Byrne. Simon & Schuster Audio. 2010 Sales: 28,000
8. Toy Story 3 Read-Along by Rick Zieff. Disney Press. 2010 Sales: 25,000
9. The Confession by John Grisham. Random House Audio. 2010 Sales: 21,000
10. Broke (abr.) by Glenn Beck. Simon & Schuster Audio. 2010 Sales: 21,000

HC: Hardcover, TP: Trade Paperback MM: Mass Market Source: Nielsen BookScan, for the 51-week period ended December. 26, 2010. Nielsen BookScan's U.S. Consumer Market Panel currently covers approximately 75% of retail sales and does not track sales from Wal-Mart/Sam's Club.