John Green is racking up weeks on the bestseller list, getting double credit in the latest edition for his No. 1 bestseller “The Fault in Our Stars” and his No. 20 best-seller “Looking for Alaska”. Both are back-list titles enjoying a resurgence.
With “The Fault in Our Stars”, it’s obvious why the e-book has been No. 1 for weeks. It’s less obvious why Green’s 2006 novel “Looking for Alaska” is seeing a resurgence. USA Today theorizes it’s a halo effect from “The Fault in Our Stars” movie.
Meanwhile, Penguin Random House, Green’s publisher, has 13 of the top-25 spots on this week’s e-book bestseller list. Last week the publisher had 14. PRH also had nearly half the spots on Amazon’s “Best Books of the Year (So Far)” list, which came out earlier this week.
Notable Absence: “The Silkworm”
“The Silkworm”, J.K. Rowling’s latest book under pen name Robert Galbraith, came out last week. It doesn’t appear on the list below because it was not in the top-25 bestsellers across all e-book retailers. It clocked in at No. 30 on our list.
However, if we filter out Amazon Kindle and just look at e-book bestsellers across the other platforms, representing nearly a third of all e-book sales, then “The Silkworm” would have ranked at No. 6.
“The Silkworm” wasn’t available for purchase as an e-book at Amazon until the middle of the morning on the day of its release, Thursday, June 19. Not enabling pre-orders certainly affected the title’s e-book sales.
There’s no way to know what might have occurred had Amazon and Hachette not been in a trade dispute and the retailer did more to push the e-book, but the disparity between sales for a No. 30 bestseller and a No. 6 bestseller should give us some indication that Amazon can powerfully affect the trajectory of bestselling e-books.
Bestseller Prices
The average price of a bestselling e-book decreased slightly this week to $7.37 from last week’s average of $7.51.
E-book bestsellers from the week ending 6/21:
1. “The Fault in Our Stars”, John Green, Penguin Random House, $4.99
2. “Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel”, Janet Evanovich, Penguin Random House, $11.84
3. “The Goldfinch: A Novel”, Donna Tartt, Hachette, $7.99
4. “Mr. Mercedes: A Novel”, Stephen King, Simon & Schuster, $11.99
5. “The Husband’s Secret”, Liane Moriarty, Penguin Random House, $5.99
6. “Written in My Own Heart’s Blood: A Novel” (Outlander Series), Diana Gabaldon, Penguin Random House, $11.99
7. “Divergent” (Divergent Series), Veronica Roth, HarperCollins, $4.99
8. “Insurgent” (Divergent Series), Veronica Roth, HarperCollins, $6.99
9. “All Fall Down: A Novel”, Jennifer Weiner, Simon & Schuster, $11.99
10. “Gone Girl: A Novel”, Gillian Flynn, Penguin Random House, $8.52
See the complete list of this week’s top 25 e-book bestsellers at Digital Book World.
Jeremy Greenfield is responsible for managing all editorial content on DigitalBookWorld.com, including the DBW Expert Publishing Blog, the Digital Book Wire and editorial email and social media communications. Prior to joining Digital Book World in October 2011, Jeremy spent three years as a careers editor at FINS.com. Jeremy lives and works in New York City and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
