Volume 261
Issue 22
06/02/2014
Bestseller Stat Shot
A quick scan of the top-selling print books of the year so far will put to bed any doubts that 2014 is the year of young adult. Eight of the top 10 titles are children’s or YA books, whereas there were only two such titles in the top 10 at this point last year. In fact, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is the top adult fiction title to date, and it’s sitting at #20 on the list. Film adaptations have been strong drivers of sales: the screen version of Divergent, released this spring, pushed the titles in Roth’s trilogy into the top three slots; that of The Fault in Our Stars, out on June 6, bumped Green’s book into the #4 and #5 slots. Meanwhile the Disney animated movie Frozen has spun off its own galaxy of print titles. On the adult side, Heaven Is for Real is also feeling the movie love; its adaptation has pushed up sales since its debut in April. Here are the top 10 titles of the year so far.
| Title | Author | Publisher | Unit Sales YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Divergent | Veronica Roth | HarperCollins/Tegen | 1,042,068 |
| Insurgent | Veronica Roth | HarperCollins/Tegen | 842,605 |
| Allegiant | Veronica Roth | HarperCollins/Tegen | 731,004 |
| The Fault in Our Stars (hardcover) | John Green | Penguin/Speak | 586,614 |
| The Fault in Our Stars (paperback) | John Green | Penguin/Speak | 427,245 |
| Hard Luck | Jeff Kinney | Abrams/Amulet | 346,955 |
| Jesus Calling | Sarah Young | Thomas Nelson | 305,005 |
| Heaven Is for Real | Todd Burpo | Thomas Nelson | 295,626 |
| Frozen | Victoria Saxon | Random House/Disney | 283,033 |
| Frozen: The Junior Novelization | Sarah Nathan | Random House/Disney | 278,975 |
From the Newsletters
Can you guess the titles by their phantom covers?
The scoop on U.K.-based Bonnier’s new U.S. imprint, Little Bee Books.
In its latest installment, our regular column chronicling one author’s adventures in self-publishing takes on the difficulties of the editing process.
New books highlight shifting attitudes in the Christian community about same-sex marriage.
The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (Random).
Blogs
A children’s bookseller’s remembrance of meeting Maya Angelou 25 years ago.
Podcasts
It was no surprise that the Amazon vs. Hachette battle dominated talk on the floor at BEA 2014. This week, we discuss how things will likely end.
Artist/teacher Jillian Tamaki (This One Summer) talks about changes in the cartooning profession and the increasingly blurred line between illustration, comics, and animation.
Sophie Jordan discusses Tease (Morrow), her sexy new novel, plus bonus coverage of BookExpo America from hosts Rose Fox and Mark Rotella.
Announcing GalleyTracker, PW’s new platform for submitting review copies, which allows publishers to track the status of the reviews of any titles they’ve sent in. For more information, click here.
