Best-Selling Books of 2009

January 4, 2010

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | CPG & FMCG | Retail & E-Commerce | Youth & Gen X

Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the the long-awaited follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, took top honors as the best-selling adult fiction book in separate 2009 ratings lists from both The Nielsen Company and Amazon.com.

Nielsen also released its yearly lists for top-selling non-fiction, juvenile and audio books.

Best-Selling Fiction Books

Following Brown’s novel on the list, Nielsen’s best-selling fiction rankings included William P. Young’s The Shack at #2,? and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife at #3.

The top 10 fiction books:

nielsen-top-10-book-sales-adult-fiction-2009.jpg

Best-Selling Non-Fiction Books

The non-fiction list from Nielsen is topped by Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man at #1, followed by conservatively themed books by Glenn Beck and Mark R. Levin at #2 and #3.

The top 10 non-fiction books:

nielsen-top-10-book-sales-adult-non-fiction-2009.jpg

Juvenile books sales were dominated by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, with New Moon, Breaking Dawn, Eclipse and Twilight capturing the top four positions.

Best Selling Juvenile Books

The top 10 list of juvenile books:

nielsen-top-10-book-sales-juvenile-2009.jpg

Best-Selling Audio Books

Nielsen’s list of top audio books – both juvenile and adult – represented a mixture of genres, with The Lost Symbol, Liberty and Tyranny, The Shack and Twilight all in the top five.

The top 10 audio books:

nielsen-top-10-audio-book-sales-adult-juvenile-2009.jpg

Amazon’s Top 10

As was the case with the Nielsen rankings, Brown’s The Lost Symbol? took top-honors as the best-selling book of 2009, according to Amazon.com. The top adult non-fiction books on Nielsen’s list, by Mark R. Levin, Glenn Beck Steve Harvey ranked #2, #3 and #4, respectively. The word-of-mouth fiction breakout of the year, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, ranked at #5 and has, Amazon said, earned more than 900 five-star reviews from its customers.

The list of Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers for 2009 (ranked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2009 appear on the list):

  1. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
  2. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, by Mark R. Levin
  3. Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, by Glenn Beck
  4. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment, by Steve Harvey
  5. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
  6. Eat This Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution, by David Zinczenko
  7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, by Jeff Kinney
  8. Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 9), by Charlaine Harris
  9. The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Book 5), by Rick Riordan
  10. Cook Yourself Thin: Skinny Meals You Can Make in Minutes, by authors from Lifetime Television
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