the year in bestsellers
TRANSCRIPT
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8/17/2019 The Year in Bestsellers
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T H E Y E A R I N B E S T S E L L E R SOur annual look at the big books of 2015 confirms that it was the year
of the adult coloring book, and that movie tie-ins continue to dominate the charts
B y Da i s y M ar y l e s
n 2015, an unusual event
occurred in the world of
bestsellers: a new cate
gory dominated the
charts. For the first time,
adult coloring books
were the most successful
pla yers on th e trade
paperback lists. Four are
among the longest-run
ning bestsellers of the
year, and 21 adult col
oring books landed on
the trade list in the course
of 2015. The 21 coloring
books spent a combined
total of 175 weeks on the
bests ellers li s ts ; th a t
accounts for 13.5% of the
total positions on the
trade paper bestseller lists
for the year.
Adult coloring booksare a long way from the
subject matter of pre
vious years’bestsellers—
erotic romance was hot in
2012 thanks to the 50
Shades trilogy, the Duck
Dynasty titles by mem
bers of the Rober tson
clan loudly quacked their
way onto the charts in
2013, and movie tie-insales in 2014 were big
winners. The latter con
tinued to do well in 2015. Three of the
five longest-running mass market top
sellers— American Sniper, The Longest
Ride, and The Martian —were movie tie-
ins, spending a total of 63 weeks on the
charts. American Sniper and The Martian
also made impressive showings on the
2015 trade paper longest-running chart.
The movie tie-in editions of Unbroken,
Stil l Alice, and Wild were also on that
trade list, along with the regular editions
of Unbroken and The Martian. That group
added up to 238 weeks on the trade
paper list. If any publisher can figure out
how to do a movie tie-in adult coloring
book, it would be a surefire winner.
Conglomerates RockThe number of publishing conglom
erates keeps shrinking, and that is a
direct result of consolidation. While
conglomerate clout on the bestseller
charts continues to be powerful, the
group keeps getting smaller. Three years
ago, in 2013, we calculated the
Bestsellers by Corporation chart for nine
companies; in 2014, it was seven compa
nies, and the latest chart only has five. It
is also the first year that we combined
the bestsellers from all the divisions and
im pr in t s o f H arpe rCo l li ns and
Harlequin, and that had a significant
boost on HC’s pap erback number s.
B E S T S E L L E R S B Y C O R P O R A T I O N
Ho w the Big Five fared on PW's 20 15 char ts
HARDCOVER PAPERBACK
COMPANY
Books Weeks Share’
Chg from
2014 Books Weeks Share*
Chg from
2014
Penguin Random House 2 39 1,042 4 0 .1 % +0.3% 150 8 89 34.2% -3.6%
HarperCol l ins** 78 2 6 9 10.4% -0 .1% 152 5 45 21.0% -0.1%
Simon & Schuster 75 3 7 9 14.6% +3.1% 4 2 218 8.4% +0.1%
Macmi l lan 65 2 8 0 10.8% +0.8% 21 58 2.2% -0.4%
Hachette Book Group USA 61 308 11.9% +5.1% 56 3 7 3 14.4% -1.7%
*This figure represents the publisher's share of the 2,600 hardcover and 2,600 paperback bestseller
s positions during 2015 (there are 25 positions on each of our fou r weekly bestseller lists).
; * *This is the first year that we com bined Harlequin's numbers with HarperCollins.
2 0 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ J A N U A R Y 1 1 , 2 0 1 6
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8/17/2019 The Year in Bestsellers
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T h e Y e a r i n B e s t s e l l e r s
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Hardcover Fict ion 203 202 251 273 268
Hardcover Nonf ic t ion 199 222 269 267 288
Mass Mark e t 200 196 290 264 291
Trade Paperback 84 122 187 226 218
The above table indicates the number of titles that appeared on the best
seller lists in each format during the given year.
2013 was the first time that the numbers reflected the top 25 books for
each list; previous calculations were based on the top 15.
Adding the 2014 paperback totals for
the two amounted to 126 titles and 549
weeks; the 2015 totals are 152 books
and 543 weeks (the additional titles are
due to the Harelquin acquisition).
In 2015, the Big Five owned 87.8% of
all the hardcover bestseller positions
available, and 80.1% in paperback. The
group’s leader, Penguin Random House,
controlled 40.1% of the hardcover slots
and 34.2% o f paperbacks in 2015. It is
unlikely that PRH will lose its first-
place standing in the coming years. As
separate publishers, Penguin and
Random House were generally the top
two players on these charts. As we point
out each year, the bestsellers that make
the weekly and annual charts represent
less than 1% of total annual title output.
And despite the conglomerates’ domi
nance, there are 37 other hardcover pub
lishers and 46 trade paperback houses
that had titles on PW ’s weekly bestseller
lists. However, most of the titles on the
mass market lists belong to the Big Five.
Only 41 of the 291 books that landed on
the mass market list in 2015 were from publishers that were not part of the Big
Five, and Kensington published 39 of
those titles. The only two other pub
lishers to crack the mass market list were
Merriam-Webster with The Merriam-
Webster Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
continued on p. 24
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8/17/2019 The Year in Bestsellers
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RANKING THE HOUSES
How the Divisions and Imprints Competed in 2015
Pub l is her Books w eek s
ADULT HARDCOVER
Putnam 35 157
Simon & Schuster 32 177
St. Martin’s 31 125
Little, Brown 23 150
Morrow 21 81
Knopf 20 98
HarperCollins 20 75
Grand Central 19 68
Ballantine 15 77
Random House 14 63
Dutton 12 38
Gallery 11 58
Bantam 11 56
Delacorte 11 50
Doubleday 11 45
HMH 9 53
Viking 9 22
Thomas Nelson 9 20
Scribner 8 68
Holt 8 62
Clarkson Potter 8 35
Crown 8 59
Spiegel & Grau 7 58
Dey Street 6 45
Faithwords 6 44
Threshold 5 27
Penguin Press 5 23
Twelve 5 19
Howard 5 14
1 Pub lisher Books w e e k s 1 1 Pub lisher Books W eek s
Farrar, Straus & Giroux 5 13 Regan Arts 2 10
LucasBooks 5 12 Broadman & Holman 2 9
Flatiron 5 12 Ripley 2 9Harmony 5 10 Celebra 2 5
Prima Games 5 6 HarperBusiness 2 5
Ten Speed 4 51 Roc 2 4
Crown Archetype 4 18 Running Press 2 3
Regnery 4 17 St. Martin’s Griffin 2 2Minotaur 4 13 Thomas Dunne 2 2Norton 4 11 Orbit 2 2Hay House 4 9 Metropolitan 1 41
Avery 4 5 Bird Street 1 19
DC Comics 4 4 Triumph 1 9
Del Rey 4 4 Center Street 1 9Portfolio 4 4 Marion Wood 1 8Wizards of the Coast 4 4 Bloomsbury 1 3
Sentinel 3 15 Golden Books 1 3
Broadside 3 14 Kingswell 1 2
Tyndale 3 12 Crown Forum 1 2
Blue Rider 3 9 Greenleaf 1 2
Riverhead 3 9 Free Press 1 2
Artisan 3 8 Prime Test Kitchen 1 2
Ecco 3 8 Quirk 1 2
Crown Business 3 7 ■ MASS MARKET
NAL 3 6 Harlequin 47 114Berkley 3 6 Mira 37 174
Ace 3 4 Zebra 21 94
Pantheon 3 4 Pocket 20 66
Penguin 3 4 Jove 18 74
Guinness 2 8
continued from p. 21
and Sourcebooks with I'll Stand by You by
Sharon Sala.
Tenure, Tenure, TenureThe key to financial success is not just
getting on the charts, but staying there.
For example, Hachette had 61 hard-
cover bestsellers in 2015, much less
than the 78 from HarperCollins—but
Hachette’s titles stayed on the lists for
a combined total of 308 weeks, while
HC had a total of 269. The result was a
higher percentage of bestseller posi-
tions for Hachette. In another example,
PRH had 150 paperback bestsellers in2015, two books fewer than the HC
total of 152, but PRH’s titles racked up
889 weeks on the year’s charts, com-
pared to 543 for HC. That resulted in a
34.2% market share for PRH versus a
21% share for HC. An explanation ofthe significant difference is tenure. A
total of 48 book titles in the HC group
were on the weekly charts for only one
or two weeks (mostly Harlequin
romances). PRH had only 22 titles with
one or twoweek runs. PRH also
enjoyed nine of 21 titles that stayed on j
the charts for a doubledigit number of
weeks, and HC had only three.
Trade paperbacks tended to stay on the
bestseller lists longer than mass markettitles in 2015. Fortyone trade paper-
backs stayed on the trade paperback
lists for at least 10 weeks, and another
77 bestsellers had runs of five or more
weeks, totaling 38% of the 240 on the
list. There were still plenty of trade paperbacks tha t hit the lists for only a
few weeks last year, with 93 books on
the list for one week and another 34 for
two weeks.
Multiple HitsVeteran authors of fiction continue to be
abundant on these annual charts, but
there were some lucky debut writers.
Debut holdovers from 2014 included
Andy Weir’s The Martian and Celeste Ngfor Everything I Never Told You. Other
debut novelists who arrived on the lists
24 P U B L I S H E R S WE E K L Y ■ J A N U A R Y 1 1 , 2 0 1 6
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Publisher Books Weeks
Pinnacle 18 57
Berkley 16 74
Signet 16 67
Vision 14 101
St. Martin’s 13 41
Grand Central 12 74
Silhouette 11 42
Avon 11 31
Love Inspired 10 15
Dell 9 75
Bantam 9 45
Ballantine 9 43
Harper 7 51
Broadway 3 34
Minotaur 2 3
Little, Brown 1 4
Kensington 1 3
Anchor 1 1
Merriam-Webster 1 1
Penguin 1 1
TRADE PAPER
Grand Central 19 117
Berkley 13 78
Broadway 7 101
Vintage 7 69
Back Bay 6 73
Penguin 6 69
Gallery 6 38
Bantam 6 23
Thomas Nelson 6 7
Random House 5 56
Publisher Books Weeks 1 1 Publisher Books 1Weeks 1
America’s Test Kitchen 5 9 Oxmoor House 2 2
Image Comics 5 10 Abingdon 2 2
Viz 5 5 Forever 2 2
Dover 4 58 Grove 1 15
Harmony 4 7 Riverhead 1 10
Morrow 3 34 Howard 1 6
Atria 3 24 Simon & Schuster 1 6
Mira 3 13 Spiegel & Grau 1 6
St. Martin’s Griffin 3 11 Worthy 1 5
Plume 3 10 Revell 1 5
Triumph 3 10 Anchor 1 4
Tyndale 3 8 Scribner 1 3
Bethany 3 5 Center Street 1 3
Harlequin 3 5 Weinstein 1 3
Kodansha 3 3 HMH 1 3
Blue Star 2 42 Christian Art Center 1 2
Dey Street 2 19 Chronicle 1 2
B&H 2 24 American Diabetes Assn. 1 2
Lark 2 17 Andrews McMeel 1 2
Fox Chapel 2 12 Baker 1 2
Touchstone 2 11 Dunham 1 2
Ballantine 2 9 HarperOne 1 2
Mariner 2 9 Love Inspired 1 2
World Almanac 2 5 Harper Thorsson 1 2
Zondervan 2 5 NAL 1 2
Barbour 2 3 Zebra 1 2Clarkson Potter 2 3
Avon 2 3 Note: Publishers of hardcovers and trade
Cogin 2 3 paperbacks that had a single title hit the
Flatiron 2 2lists fo r jus t one week are no t included in
last year were David Duchovny with Holy
Cow (FS&G), Stephanie Clifford with
Everybody Rise (St. Martin’s), and Garth
Risk Hallberg with City of Fire (Knopf).There were 20 authors that scored four
or more mass market bestsellers during
2015. They included William W.
Johnstone (18), Debbie Macomber (16),
NoraRoberts/J .D. Robb (15), and James
Patterson and his cowriters (11).
Collectively books by those 20 writers
occupied a total of 473 positions on the
mass market charts, an impressive
36.4% of that list.
Eclectic is a good word to describe the
assortment of nonfiction high rollers,
including the leader of the pack, The
Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, a
book on decluttering and organizing—
very important while New Year resolu-
tions are still on the todo list. Finance,health and fitness, and religion and spiri-
tuality continue to be strong nonfiction
topics, as are books by Bill O'Reilly.
Religion writers are again blessed on
these charts, including Joel Osteen,
Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, Max Lucado,
and Billy Graham. And with the 2016
elections looming and the presidential
candidates causing a stir, there is no sur-
prise to find many political books on the
charts, including Ted Cruz's A Time for
Truth, Ben Carson’s A MorePerfect Union,
and Donald Trump’s Crippled America.
Gold Goal GettersIt ’s hard to get to the top of the charts, and
it’s even harder to stay there. Only four of
the 82 books that had doubledigit runson the 2015 weekly charts stayed at # 1for
more than 10 weeks. In hardcover fiction,
The Girl on the Train stayed at #1 for 14
weeks. In hardcover nonfiction, The Life-
Changing Magic of Tidying Up was at the
top of the charts for 12 weeks. And in
trade paperback, the movie tiein of
America Sniper remained at #1 for 14
weeks, and Grey was there for 11 weeks.*7
There were a total of 70 books with runs
of one, two, or three weeks at # 1. But even
one week lets the author and publisher
declare the book a chart topper. ■
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y . C O M 25
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8/17/2019 The Year in Bestsellers
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C o p y r i g h t o f P u b l i s h e r s W e e k l y i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f P W x y z L L C a n d i t s c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e
c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s
e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r
i n d i v i d u a l u s e .