Bestelling Genre Books of 2007

Publishers Weekly's current issue is the one with the big round-up of the bestselling books of last year, and I was under the impression that I've been pulling the genre (meaning SF/F/Horror) titles out of that list for my own amusement and the entertainment of whoever might be watching for the last couple of years.

Except that I don't seem to have done that here last year, so maybe it was on rec.arts.sf.written that I did it...

But I'm typing here now, so I'll continue.

(The full PW articles are available online -- hardcover, paperback, children's.)

Hardcovers:
For parallax, the #1 fiction title is Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, at 2,201,865 and the #1 non-fiction book is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne at 4,590,000.

#10 Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year (740,000)
#18 Richard Bachman, Blaze (581,000)
#22 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Hurin (462,000)

J.D. Robb, Creation in Death (395,080)
Terry Goodkind, Confessor (280,644)
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union (245,465)
Laurell K. Hamilton, The Harlequin (245,155)
James Rollins, The Judas Strain (200,000)
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, The Wheel of Darkness (197,324)
Sherilyn Kenyon, Devil May Cry (183,257)
Christine Feehan, Dark Possession (175,737)
Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box (175,000)
Christopher Moore, You Suck: A Love Story (175,000)
Laurell K. Hamilton, A Lick of Frost (173,240)
Newt Gingrich & William R. Forstchen, Pearl Harbor (125,440)
William Gibson, Spook Country (118,635)
Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Sandworms of Dune (116,647)
Jim Butcher, White Night (115,137)
Charlaine Harris, All Together Dead (105,414)
Terry Brooks, The Elves of Cintra (102,891)

According to PW, their list contains all of the fiction books that sold over 100,000 copies in the US last year -- or at least new hardcovers that did so. (There may be some strong-selling backlist, but that's fairly unlikely in the hardcover category.)

Trade Paperbacks:
#1 is Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, with 4,274,804 copies.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road (1,364,722)
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (603,000)
Gregory Maguire, Wicked (281,431)
Kate Mosse, Labyrinth (230,646)
Gregory Maguire, Wicked (143,820) -- PW calls this the tie-in edition, but I think they have it backward
Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide (143,684)
Max Brooks, World War Z (132,549)
Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch (132,030)
Matt Groening, Simpsons Comics Beach Blanket Bongo (125,099)
Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job (125,060)
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (125,000)
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (122,000)
Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (116,521)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (110,000)
Stephen King, editor, The Best American Short Stories 2007 (103,047)

Mass Market Paperbacks:
#1 is Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts, at 2,247,730

Michael Crichton, Next (1,600,000)
J.D. Robb, Born in Death (955,073)
J.D. Robb, Innocent in Death (895,194)
Scott Smith, The Ruins (835,321)
James Rollins, The Black Order (750,000)
Stephen King, Lisey's Story (730,000)
Gregory Maguire, Wicked (650,000)
Catherine Doulter, Wizard's Daughter (640,972)
Sherilyn Kenyon, Dream Hunter (600,000)
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, The Book of the Dead (592,400)
Stephen King, The Mist (560,902)
Christine Feehan, Dark Celebration (545,957)
Christine Feehan, Safe Harbor (540,393)
David Michaels, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Fallout (518,622)
J.D. Robb et. al., Dead of Night (515,194)
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (511,361)

On this list, PW only gets down to the 500,000-copy level before succumbing to ennui.

Children's:
#1 in hardcover frontlist is, of course, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, at 13,114,692.
#2 Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (1,112,660)
#5 James Patterson, Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (590,875)
#10 Mary Pope Osborne, Dragon of the Red Dawn (355,521)
#12 Rick Riordan, The Titan's Curse (350,000)
# 18 C.S. Lewis & Robert Sabuda, The Chronicles of Narnia Pop-Up (251,520)
# 19 Matthew Reinhart, Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy (248,918)
#26 Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles: The Nixie's Song (210,086)
# 30 Angie Sage, Physik (190,169)
# 31 Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: From Ship to Shore (190,000)
# 38 Sir Thomas Faye, Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: The Secret Files of the East India Trading Co. (175,000)
# 39 Scott Westerfeld, Extras (172,615)
#43 T.T. Sutherland, Disney Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: The Movie Storybook (150,000)
# 45 Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon (150,000)
# 50 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Deluxe Edition (144,742)
#53 D.J. MacHale, Pilgrims of Rayne (137,068)
and several more, but my fingers are getting tired.

Hardcover backlist unsurprisingly leads off with Stephenie Meyer's New Moon at 820,604.

The rest of the list is mostly classic books for little kids, but Sorcerer's Stone is at #14 at 335,931 and Order of the Phoenix at # 15 with 311,040.
#18 Half-Blood Prince (295,339)
#19 Chamber of Secrets (287,543)
#23 Prisoner of Azkaban (265,638)
#24 Goblet of Fire (257,880)
#36 Meyer, Twilight (203,729)
#41 DiTerlizzi & Black, The Field Guide (198,072)
(That's the first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles; the second is at # 72, the third at #115, and the fifth at #116.)

Paperback frontlist is anchored by James Patterson's Maximum Ride: School's Out -- Forever, with 999,753.

From there down, there's some more of Osborne's "Magic Tree House," some Paolini and Pullman, more Pirates of the Caribbean, some Riordan and several of "A Series of Unfortunate Events," Patterson's Maximum Ride, various movie tie-ins (Shrek, Transformers, etc.) on the way down to the 150,000 copy mark at #69. There's a lot of at least mildly fantastic stuff there.

And the paperback backlist chart starts off almost entirely fantasy:
#1 Pullman, The Golden Compass (various editions, 1,337,680)
#2 Meyer, Twilight (879,120)
#3 Half-Blood Prince (825,072)
#4 Order of the Phoenix (778,564)
#5 Sorcerer's Stone (696,188)
#6 Pullman, The Subtle Knife (669,458)
#7 Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (651,149)
(#8 is S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.)
#9 Chamber of Secrets (562,835)
#10 Goblet of Fire (556,799)
#11 Prisoner of Azkaban (548,512)

And going down from there: more Osborne (lots of Osborne), Riordan, Paolini, a couple of Narnia books, Roald Dahl, Westerfeld, Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, and Charlotte's Web (still selling 151,841 copies in a year, even fifty-five years later.)


And those are the bestselling genre books of 2007, at least according to PW's figures.