Kindle Top 50 analysis May 28 2011
I haven’t done a post like this in a while, so I thought it was time to take a look at the Kindle bestsellers.
Note that these are the bestselling books* (or they are supposed to be) in the Kindle store…not the New York Times bestsellers.
Let’s start out with just a list:
| Rank | Title | Author | Price | Agency | TTS Blocked |
| 1 | Water for Elephants | Gruen | $4.17 | No | No |
| 2 | The Hunger Games | Collins | $4.69 | No | No |
| 3 | Something Borrowed | Griffin | $7.99 | Yes | No |
| 4 | Patterson | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 5 | The Help | Stockett | $9.99 | Yes | No |
| 6 | In the Garden of Beasts | Larson | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 7 | Summer Secrets | Freethy | $2.99 | No | No |
| 8 | Buried Prey | Sandford | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 9 | Heaven is for Real | Burpo | $6.13 | No | No |
| 10 | Catching Fire | Collins | $8.40 | No | No |
| 11 | Baldacci | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 12 | Mockingjay | Collins | $7.14 | No | No |
| 13 | Connelly | $7.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 14 | Fey | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 15 | Martin | $8.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 16 | McLain | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 17 | Something Blue | Griffin | $7.99 | Yes | No |
| 18 | Hllenbrand | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 19 | The Shop | Black | $0.99 | No | No |
| 20 | The Shephard | Cross | $2.39 | No | No |
| 21 | Dead Reckoning | Harris | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 22 | The Jefferson Key | Berry | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 23 | The Devil’s Hour | Black | $0.99 | No | No |
| 24 | Connelly | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 25 | The B*tch-Proof Suit | Black | $0.99 | No | No |
| 26 | Larsson | $11.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 27 | Word Search* | $0.99 | No | No | |
| 28 | Baldacci | $0.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 29 | A Turn in the Road | Macomber | $8.37 | No | No |
| 30 | The Snowman | Nesbo | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 31 | Martin | $8.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 32 | Vegas Moon | Locke | $0.99 | No | No |
| 33 | Faking It | Lorello | $2.99 | No | No |
| 34 | Clark | $12.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 35 | Larsson | $7.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 36 | Larsson | $7.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 37 | Night Road | Hannah | $13.00 | Yes | No |
| 38 | Sweet Gnger Poison | Robinson | $0.99 | No | No |
| 39 | Riordan | $9.29 | No | Yes | |
| 40 | Verghese | $9.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 41 | Her Perfect Revenge | Mara | $0.99 | No | No |
| 42 | Darkness on the Edge of Town | Black | $0.99 | No | No |
| 43 | Looking for Trouble | Kern | $0.99 | No | No |
| 44 | Caleb’s Crossing | Brooks | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 45 | Lost In Shangri-La | Zuckoff | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 46 | Martin | $8.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 47 | Shales | $14.99 | Yes | Yes | |
| 48 | Liquid Fear | Nicholson | $0.99 | No | No |
| 49 | Does the Noise in my Head | Tyler | $12.99 | Yes | No |
| 50 | Seal Team Six | Templin | $12.99 | Yes | No |
In case you are wondering about the blank spaces in the titles, those are the books with text-to-speech access blocked by the publisher. I’m moving towards judging that on a book by book basis, rather than a publisher by publisher basis. I can’t verify it yet, but it looks like it may be up to the authors rather than the publishers to make that decision.
That, by the way, is one of the things that stands out to me: of the 30 Agency Model books, only seventeen of them have blocked the access. That feels like a real shift to me…I’m noticing more and more that even Random House isn’t blocking the access.
One book, by the way, was not Agency Model, but did have text-to-speech access blocked…that surprised me, although I knew it could happen.
Overall, thirty-two of the top fifty do not have text-to-speech access blocked…the clear majority.
It’s also worth noting that out of the top fifty, twenty are not Agency Model. It’s quite possible that before long, more than half of the most popular Kindle store books will be non-Agency Model…not published by the six biggest trade publishers in the US (they are all Agency Model currently).
How are the prices?
The average overall is $8.04. Thirty-one of the titles are under $10. Eleven of the titles are ninety-nine cents.
The average non-Agency Model title is $3.32.
The average Agency Model title is $11.19. One of those is a Kindle Single (hmm… thought those were published by Amazon) which is ninety-nine cents. Take that out, and the average Agency Model book is $11.54.
I find it interesting to check these from time to time…
* One of the titles is actually active content…I have a tough time calling a game a book (although there are gamebooks, this isn’t one of them)
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
