The Year in Bestsellers

8/17/2019 The Year in Bestsellers

1/5

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


2/5

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

PublishersWeeklyPublishersWeekly

S t a y a h e a d a n d i n f o r m e d w i t h

a FREE s u b s c r i p t i o n t o t h e s e

o u t s t a n d i n g r e s o u r c e s a n d n e w

m e d i a a d d i t i o n s t o PW.Your guide to

the world of books.• - N w m U t t e r *

PWDaily

jy £g Children's Bookshelf

Children's BooksheH Up Stoat

m\ t h e b o o k l i f e * r e p o r tCooking the Books

Cooking the Books

mmBisil

P u b l i s h e r s W e e k l y . c o m

c pubw eekly Q@PublishersWkly D i s c o v er t h e W o r l d o f B o o k s : P u b l i s h e r s W e e k l y .c o mW W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y . C O M 21


3/5

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


4/5

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


5/5

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 .

Documents

The Year in Bestsellers