Despite the lack of a clear #1 bestseller across print and digital formats in the vein of last year’s The Girl on the Train coup, Jojo Moyes had a strong showing in the first half of 2016, placing three editions of Me Before You among the top 20 slots in Nielsen BookScan’s list of bestselling print books for the January–June period. The e-book edition of Me Before You came in at #2 on the Amazon Kindle e-books list for roughly the same period.
With no new title making a big splash in the year, Dr. Seuss’s perennially bestselling Oh, the Places You’ll Go! was at the top of the BookScan print list, due to its popularity as a graduation gift. The top-selling new release in the first half of 2016 was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, which sold more than 322,000 print copies, landing it in fourth place on the BookScan list.
Robert Bryndza’s The Girl in the Ice put another thriller with a female lead and girl in the title on top in Kindle e-books, and was one of three books from U.K.-based Bookouture to land on Amazon’s list of top-selling Kindle e-books for the first half of 2016. The self-published The Shadow of Vampire by Bella Forrest was at #7 on the Amazon list.
Children’s books held a bit more sway over the BookScan list in the first half of this year than in the first half of 2015, occupying eight slots. Meanwhile, two Harry Potter–themed coloring books from Scholastic made the top 20 print bestsellers.
Amazon Top 20 Kindle E-books
1. The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza (Bookouture)
2. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (Penguin)
3. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s)
4. The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauch (Thomas Nelson)
5. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)
6. The Last Mile by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
7. A Shade of Vampire by Bella Forrest (Bella Forrest)
8. The Girl You Lost by Kathryn Croft (Bookouture)
9. The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty (Harper Perennial)
10. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (Random House)
11. After You by Jojo Moyes (Pamela Dorman)
12. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
13. The Obsession by Nora Roberts (Berkley)
14. January by Audrey Carlen (Waterhouse)
15. 15th Affair by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown)
16. One with You by Sylvia Day (Griffin)
17. The Girl with No Past by Kathryn Croft (Bookouture)
18. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
19. The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (Ecco)
20. When I’m Gone by Emily Bleeker (Lake Union)
BookScan Top 20 Print Books
1. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss (Random House)
2. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed)
3. Me Before You (trade paper) by Jojo Moyes (Penguin)
4. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (Random House)
5. Old School by Jeff Kinney (Amulet)
6. Harry Potter Coloring Book (Scholastic)
7. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)
8. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup)
9. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk)
10. Me Before You (mass market movie tie-in) by Jojo Moyes (Penguin)
11. First 100 Words by Roger Priddy (Priddy)
12. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)
13. Me Before You (trade paper movie tie-in) by Jojo Moyes (Penguin)
14. Lost Ocean by Johanna Basford (Penguin)
15. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (Random House)
16. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman (Northfield)
17. Spark Joy: An Illustrated Mast by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed)
18. Harry Potter Magical Creatures (Scholastic)
19. Make Me by Lee Child (Dell)
20. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (Philomel)
Source: Nielsen BookScan and Amazon.
Note: The Bookscan top 20 covers the period January–June 2016; the Amazon top 20 Kindle e-books covers the period jan. 1–july 1, 2016.