As the holiday season approaches and we begin reflecting on the past year, Amazon is taking a moment to celebrate the readers and extraordinary books that defined 2019. Whether you’re looking to discover books for everyone on your list or simply browsing for yourself, Amazon Charts’ This Year in Books is your guide to the most sold, most read, and most loved books of 2019. And what a year for reading it was! From inspiring memoirs to a wide array of fictional adventures; customers purchased, borrowed, listened to, and read more books than they did last year.
Key trends from This Year in Books 2019
Top 5 Most Sold Books of 2019
Both debut novels and modern classics seized top spots among this year’s blockbusters based on sales of all formats across Amazon.com, Audible.com, and Amazon Books stores. These are 2019’s Most Sold books:
Fiction
- Where the Crawdads Sing
- The Silent Patient
- Treasure Island: An Audible Original Drama
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
- The Handmaid's Tale
Non-Fiction
- Becoming
- Educated
- Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face Book 2)
- Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be (Girl, Wash Your Face Series Book 1)
- Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
Top 5 Most Read Books of 2019
Readers kept their eyes and ears glued to these top reads, which include both gasp-worthy thrillers and thoughtful advice. These are 2019’s Most Read books:
Fiction
- Where the Crawdads Sing
- The Guardians
- The Institute
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Non-Fiction
- How To Win Friends & Influence People
- Becoming
- Take Control of Your Life: How to Silence Fear and Win the Mental Game
- Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
- Educated
Top 5 All Ears
One of life’s many pleasures is having someone read to you. Readers tuned into these five titles more on Audible this year compared to the Kindle edition:
- Becoming
- Educated
- Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (Girl, Wash Your Face Book 2)
- Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be (Girl, Wash Your Face Series Book 1)
- Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
Top 5 Unputdownable
If you’re hooked on a book, life can wait. Here are the Kindle and Audible books readers blazed through faster than similar ones in 2019:
- Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 1)
- The Lost Colony (The Long Winter Trilogy Book 3)
- The Italian
- Insatiable: A Cloverleigh Farms Standalone
- The Family Journal
Top 5 Most Anticipated
Oh, the joy of having a book appear in your life on publication day! These are the books that customers preordered the most:
- Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man #7)
- Howard Stern Comes Again
- Wrecking Ball (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 14)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The Illustrated Edition (Collector's Edition) (4)
- Warning
Amazon Charts is a reimagined weekly bestseller list that highlights the Top 20 Most Sold & Most Read books across all formats. When exploring Amazon Charts, readers can browse fun data stories for unique insights about the books on the list. From which Kindle titles were the most "Highly Quotable," according to the rate customers highlight passages in the book, to which were simply "Unputdownable," according to how quickly customers read a book from cover to cover.
Want more? Browse the complete list of This Year in Books on Amazon.com.
Methodology:
Amazon Charts include data across all reading formats—whether books are bought or borrowed, listened to or read—to accurately reflect how readers are really reading and buying books today. Here’s a bit more about the methodology behind This Year in Books 2019:
Amazon Charts data reported on 2019 This Year in Books spans activity from 1/1/2019 – 11/15/2019.