Most of 2020 was clouded with bad news, but maybe there’s a flicker of good news mixed in. Across the board all genres of books saw sales gains from the previous year. According to Nielsen Bookscan the total number of books sold was 751 million. This was the best year for book sales since 2010!
Just writing that is amazing. The top selling book of the year was former President Obama’s A Promised Land. Unsurprisingly. There are several factors at play here and who really knows what will happen in the coming years, but people are buying and reading books, and there’s not a single negative when that happens.
The bestselling books of 2020:
A Promised Land – Barack Obama
Midnight Sun – Stephenie Meyer
Dog Man: Grime and Punishment – Dav Pilkey
Too Much and Never Enough – Mary Trump
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Suzanne Collins
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
Untamed – Glennon Doyle
The Deep End – Jeff Kinney
White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – Charlie Mackesy
Did you read any of these last year?
Johnny Reads 
Books are definitely on the rise! I’ve not read any of these (yet). I’m very surprised Midnight Sun made it so high – I know the Twilight series was an absolute phenomenon (I’m not overstating when I say that every girl in my class at school read it, along with a good proportion of their mums), but I’d assumed that changes in the YA book landscape and culture more widely might have put a dent in the series’ popularity all these years later. Ah well.
LikeLike
Definitely agree. That’s probably the one noteworthy surprise for me on the list. Happy to say I’ve never read any in the series, which isn’t surprising. Though I haven’t yet read it, I am curious about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunger Games books and movies, but Katniss was the driving force.
LikeLike
Ah, reading this made me feel so nice! Also, I’ve heard so much about Where the Crawdads Sing but I haven’t gotten around to reading it.
LikeLike
Yes! I don’t really know anything about it, besides it has been a bestseller for so long now. I think I’ll likely pick it up at some point.
LikeLiked by 1 person