Honestly, if someone gave me all of three guesses I bet I could name three books out of the top ten best selling books of 2014. And I bet most of you could easily get at least one. Why? Because the YA trend is only continuing. Sure there was that ridiculous Slate article (that I won’t link to) that said YA shouldn’t be read by adults. Or something like that, I never got around to reading the whole thing. YA sells. And maybe it doesn’t make up as much of the total number of books as some might think, but when you’re talking mega bestsellers we all know they’re going to easily make those lists.
Now time for the guessing game. Which books do you think were amongst the ten best selling of the year? Come on. I’ll give you a minute to think it over.
LA LA LA
Me singing.
Okay. For the purposes of this list Nielsen only included print editions of books, and hardcovers and paperbacks count as distinct titles. Which is why the same title can appear multiple times within the top ten. Now I’m just going to show you the list.
1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (paperback)
2. Divergent by Veronica Roth (paperback)
3. Insurgent by Veronica Roth (paperback)
4. Allegiant by Veronica Roth (paperback)
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney (hardcover)
6. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (movie tie in, paperback)
7. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (paperback)
8. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (hardcover)
9. Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General by Bill O’Reilly (hardcover)
10. Looking for Alaska by John Green (paperback)
When I look at the list I see the same thing I saw on the Twitter list of the year’s most mentioned books. I see John Green on top of the literary world at the moment. And I see Veronica Roth trying to take his title. Want to know what I don’t see? I don’t see any surprises. No random self published book. No unknown author miraculously making the list. It was a good year for book sales, and it was a good year for YA mega bestsellers.
What do you think of the best selling books of 2014? Surprised by any of these?
Johnny Reads 
I am not surprised these books were the top sellers of 2014 since most of them were also made into feature films. Hopefully this year we can see some top sellers from unknown and new authors–Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Well I’m thinking this year’s list is a little similar. With another John Green adaptation on the way, as well as Insurgent. But I’m thinking EL James breaks into the top ten too. With her adaptation coming in a month.
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Im surprised by looking for alaska. I would have expected paper towns (which has just wrapped up filming for the movie adaption) instead, purely because people will know the movie will soon be out. Otherwise its as expected.
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I think Looking fot Alaska was one of the most banned books of the year. Maybe that helped sales? Especially since there’s the whole week dedicated to those books.
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Ah yes of course how could I forget banned book week?!
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No surprise there. I would have liked to have seen other names on there, I’m not picky, just more diversity, but with how much John Green has been taking over recent reading trends, he should be número uno on the list.
I’ll never be able to read the Divergent series. A friend gave away the ending and I hated it, so I won’t read it.
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I’ve actually changed my stance on those books. I think I know the ending, but I might read them. At least the first one.
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I wonder why any self published author didn’t get on that list.
There are some great, self published YA books.
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Well I don’t know any self published books selling on the level of these books.
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Well, me neither. But I think they should.
It’s easier to get a success on some level if an author is lucky enough to get a name of big publishing company on a cover. I don’t have anything against publishing companies, don’t get me wrong. I just think that advertising is different and on extremely different levels, unfortunately, and that influences which books we actually get our hand on.
But I’m sure there are writers on a similar, if not the same, level of well known ones.
Would you agree?
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Obviously marketing affects what people buy, but let’s not oversimplify it here. There are a lot of authors with the backing of major publishers who aren’t selling millions of books or making millions of dollars. Just about all of them. No one knew The Hunger Games would take off. Or Harry Potter. Or self published authors like Hugh Howey and EL James. Just happens.
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I know, you’re right. I may get a bit overloaded on the subject 😉
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[…] was reading post on John Guillen’s blog. It’s about top 10 bestselling books in 2014. As he pointed out, on this list there […]
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