“Sales totals for the Twilight Saga have dropped off, as you would expect for any series whose last book was published over two years ago. However, the books are still incredibly strong sellers.
“Call it escapism or merely a fondness for good stories, but in the midst of a recession at home and wars abroad, fiction seized a record-high share of the best sellers of 2010.
The year’s most popular author: Stieg Larsson, the late Swedish novelist, whose Millennium trilogy of crime thrillers captured the top three spots on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list for 2010, based on data collected all year.
Overall, novelists — from Jonathan Frazen to Nicholas Sparks— accounted for 77% of the weekly best sellers, up from 76% in 2009 and the highest percentage since the list began in 1993.
Data collected for the list — which includes e-book sales — also show:
• Romance, which tends to sell best in hard times, accounted for 12% of best sellers, up from 10% in 2009. One factor: Readers who wouldn’t be caught dead with risqué covers in public enjoyed the privacy of reading romantic e-books.
• After a remarkable two-year run at the top of the annual list, Stephenie Meyer’s popularity began to cool off. She accounted for 4% of best sellers the list tracked, down from 11% in 2009. The vampire and paranormal craze among readers isn’t dead, but it’s fading, accounting for just 9% of best sellers, down from 17% in 2009.”
USA Today also has the top selling 100 books of the year listed. Unlike other lists (NY Times, Publishers Weekly, etc) they don’t do sub-categories or eliminate categories all together. So, you get a really clear picture as to exactly what America is reading! Here’s where the Stephenie Meyer novels/novellas ranked in the top 100 books sold in 2010:
•10 Breaking Dawn
•11 Bree Tanner
•13 Eclipse
•24 Twilight
•27 New Moon
•81 The Host
Other notable YA/children’s novels making a strong presence on the list were all three books in the Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins, the Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan, and the Wimpy Kid Series by Jeff Kinney.”
