Nine out of the Top 10 Kindle ebooks for 2018 so far are published by Amazon imprints — four titles from Lake Union, four from Thomas & Mercer and one from Montlake — with the only exception being Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff in top spot.
It’s rare for a non-fiction book to top the ebook league table but Wolff’s book is reckoned to have sold around two million copies across print and digital formats since it was published in January this year. Ebook sales were probably boosted by the fact that the first hardback printing sold out very quickly and many readers opted for the ebook while the publisher was catching up with the demand.
Fire and Fury has fallen back in recent weeks and was not in the Top 20 this week on Amazon’s Charts for Most Sold non-fiction, covering sales across print, audiobook and ebook formats through Amazon. The book is No 13 in the Most Read section of the Amazon Charts non-fiction section but the momentum now seems to be with another book about the Trump administration — A Higher Loyalty by James Comey, which is said to have sold around 600,000 copies in its first couple of weeks.
The rest of the Kindle top sellers for the year to date include Melinda Leigh’s thriller Say You’re Sorry in second spot, White Rose Black Forest by Eoin Dempsey in third, Lee Goldberg’s True Fiction fourth, and Tips For Living by Renee Shafransky making up the top five.
A very honourable mention should be made of the book in sixth place — Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan, which Amazon has revealed has now sold over one million copies since being published in July 2017.
The book is published by Amazon Publishing imprint Lake Union and the wartime epic has proved to be a commercial and critical phenomenon, with an incredible total of 17,897 reviews on Amazon.com with an average of 4.8 stars.
The overall best-selling list for 2017 saw 15 of the Top 20 Kindle ebooks being published by Amazon imprints and that trend is continuing as the Top 20 best-sellers for 2018 so far comprise 17 books from Amazon Publishing, with the only two non-Amazon titles in the 11-20 places being Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Rupi Kaur’s smash hit poetry collection Milk and Honey.
Recently released figures showed that traditional publishers were seeing their share of ebook sales falling after sticking to a policy of high ebook prices and readers are increasingly turning to Amazon Publishing’s titles and ebooks from indie authors.
The Top 10 Best Sellers of 2018 so far in Kindle ebooks are:
- 1: Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (Henry Holt)
- 2: Say You’re Sorry by Melinda Leigh (Montlake)
- 3: White Rose Black Forest by Eoin Dempsey (Lake Union)
- 4: True Fiction by Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer)
- 5: Tips for Living by Renee Shrafransky (Lake Union)
- 6: Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan (Lake Union)
- 7: Silent Victim by Caroline Mitchell (Thomas & Mercer)
- 8: Twist of Faith by Ellen J Green (Thomas & Mercer)
- 9: It Ends With Her by Brianna Labuskes (Thomas & Mercer)
- 10: When Never Comes by Barbara Davis (Lake Union)
Amazon Publishing titles take 15 spots in Top 20 Kindle Best-Sellers of 2017