The Year in Bestsellers 2016

New bestselling trends in 2016 are a bit elusive. No Trump books commanded long runs on PW’s weekly adult lists, but adult coloring books stayed solid, movie tie-ins were winners once again, and both familiar and new faces hit the lists. In terms of the corporate battle, the Big Five trade houses ruled, with some minor shifts among them.

Back in 2015, one of the most successful bestselling categories was adult coloring books—especially in trade paperback. There were 21 coloring books on the bestseller lists that year, and four of them were among the longest-running trade paper bestsellers. Combined, they held 175 slots on the weekly bestseller lists, or 13.5% of the total positions on the lists over the course of the year.

The category was even more successful in 2016. There were six trade paper coloring books in the longest-running group, totaling 137 slots on the weekly lists. Including the 25 other coloring books that made the trade paper list, the category held 256 list positions last year, accounting for 20% of the trade paper bestseller slots. One wonders if the popularity has something to do with election-year stress.

Conglomerate clout continued to power the bestseller lists in 2016, with the Big Five—Hachette Book Group USA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—dominating in all print formats. Their share of bestseller real estate barely changed from 2015. Last year, the Big Five took 87.8% of the total positions on the hardcover bestseller lists and 78.5% of the paperback bestseller slots; in 2015, they also had a 87.8 % share of hardcover positions and 80.2% of paperback. Having acquired many of their competitors over the years,the Big Five represent at least 70 imprints and divisions with books that hit the charts this past year.

Once again, in 2016 Penguin Random House published more bestsellers than any other house in the U.S.: a total of 358 titles hit our lists last year. PRH’s bestseller performance was strongest in hardcover. Its share of hardcover bestseller list positions was 41%, up slightly from 2015. Its share of paperback bestsellers, however, slipped by 2.7 percentage points and its lead over second-place HarperCollins in the format was just over 10 percentage points, compared to a nearly 27-percentage-point lead over Hachette Book Group in the hardcover standings.

PRH maintained its lead in paperback despite having fewer titles hit the bestseller lists than HC. HC had 152 books on the trade and mass market lists, but they held a total of only 467 positions on those lists. PRH’s 121 paperback bestsellers held 818 slots. One reason for the short stay of HC paperback bestsellers on the lists is the publisher’s strength in mass market, where books tend to leave the lists quickly. HC’s Harlequin and Mira divisions had a total of 93 mass market bestsellers last year, and they held 258 positions on the lists—an average of just under three weeks per title.

Other hardcover bestseller players included Disney, Guinness, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Kensington, Norton, Regnery, Rodale, and Workman. This group amassed 157 slots on the weekly hardcover lists, amounting to a 6% share of hardcover real estate. HMH was the star, with 13 titles appearing in 46 slots.

The only company on the mass market ranking that is not part of the Big Five is Kensington, with 35 titles in 147 positions on the lists, accounting for 5.6% of the total paperback bestseller real estate. Kensington western author William W. Johnstone (who died in 2004) had 16 backlist titles become bestsellers, holding 64 slots on the lists.

There was a bit more competition on the trade paper lists, where about 50 companies competed with the Big Five, many benefitting from the adult coloring book bonanza.

A few titles worthy of special mention include Milk and Honey, with poetry and illustrations by Rupi Kaur, from Andrews McMeel, which was on the trade paper list for 32 weeks, making it one of the longest-running bestsellers in the format. Another is The Sympathizer, a debut novel from Grove Atlantic by Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen; this bestselling novel won the 2016

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Fervent by Bible teacher and conference speaker Priscilla Shirer, which spent 27 weeks on the trade paper list, was named book of the year by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. The sweetest bestseller is Cake Magic: Mix & Match Tour Way to 100 Amazing Combinations by Caroline Wright, from Workman; it had a 14-week run.

More Debuts

Last year was a pretty good year for debut hardcover fiction, with eight titles making the weekly charts. Three stayed for 10 weeks or longer: The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, from Ecco; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, from Knopf; and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, from Ballantine. All three had stellar reviews and made end-of-the-year best-book lists, proving that quality first novels can sometimes outperform those from well-known authors.

Innovative bestselling author James Patterson came up with a new idea to promote reading: a series of thrillers that are short (150 pages or less), cheap (around $5), and fast paced. Called BookShots, the idea looks like a quick success: 16 titles held 53 spots on the bestseller lists in 2016. Patterson is hoping to soon have them at grocery store checkout lines.

Staying Power

For many successful books, life on the charts is short. Only 29 titles lasted 10 weeks or more on the hardcover fiction lists, compared to 77 that stayed just one week. Nonfiction titles did not fare much better. Though 31 enjoyed double-digit runs, a whopping 139 landed just once in 2016. The track record of paperbacks was mixed: just 19 books lasted 10 weeks or longer, but only 42 had single-week appearances. Trade paper titles, which traditionally have the most longevity on the lists, did not hold up. The trade paper lists had 37 double-digit winners, but they also had 85 titles that only lasted one week.

Hitting Gold

Getting the coveted #1 slot on any of the four lists is a challenge. In 2016, 36 hardcover fiction titles made it to the top spot, but only nine lasted for more than a week. The best performer was John Grisham, who stayed on top for six weeks with The Whistler. In nonfiction, 21 hardcover nonfiction titles made it to #1, but only eight had multiple-week runs. Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard held the top spot for nine weeks—the longest run in the category.

The movie tie-in edition of The Girl on the Train had 10-week-plus runs atop both the mass market and trade paper lists (11 weeks and 20 weeks, respectively)—the only top seller to do that. Me Before You, another movie tie-in, held on for eight weeks on the mass market list and seven weeks on the trade list.

Bestsellers by Corporation
How the Big Five fared on PW’s 2016 lists

*This figure represents the publisher’s share of the 2,600 hardcover and 2,600 paperback bestseller list positions during 2016. (There are 25 positions on each of our four weekly bestseller lists.)

Ranking the Houses

How the Divisions and Imprints Competed in 2016

Note: Publishers that had a single title hit the lists for just one week are not included in the ranking.

PW’s 2016 Longest-Running Bestsellers

*These titles reached the #1 spot on PW’s weekly bestseller lists at least once in 2016.
Note: The numbers in parentheses indicate how many weeks the title in question spent on PW’s bestseller lists prior to 2016.

Bestsellers by Format

The table above indicates the number of titles that appeared on the bestseller lists in each format during the given year. Clearly hardcover nonfiction had the most impressive gains in 2016. 2013 was the first time that the numbers were based on lists with 25 titles each week; previous calculations were based on top-15 lists.