Top 20 Most Sold and Most Read Books of the Week | Hacker News Reader

Top 20 Most Sold and Most Read Books of the Week

amazon.com

236 pointshappy-go-lucky108 comments

It says something about how my impression of Amazon has changed over the years, but when I first saw that headline, I thought this was going to be a competitor for Google Charts.

I was really hoping for some kind of replacement for the god-awful Cloudwatch dashboards, which AWS doesn't even use internally because they are borderline useless (source, worked in AWS and built many dashboards)

I was really hoping it would be 7 new SDKs and 65 new billing metrics.

I got super excited they would have better charting for Cloudwatch. I used Datadog for awhile and the charting system was amazing there. Hopefully, one day they'll improve Cloudwatch.

Even the 2017 Aurora paper shows CloudWatch, Datadog and New Relic charts: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3056101

It's not a stand-alone chart-drawing API, like Google Charts, but here's where AWS is getting into the "lines and bars" business: https://quicksight.aws/

somehow I missed that AWS had its own TLD now.

Google has one too, they don't use it outside of domains.google and one other though.

Unrelated, but the forced scrolling on that site broke my two finger slide trackpad go back gesture. I hate it when website's do that.

I was actually quite disappointed when I clicked the link and saw books instead of graphs. With that said I don't have too much bad to say about ChartJS.

I do. I have a page on Google Charts that I want to replace, and all the graphing library APIs seem to be badly designed. I literally just want to make a line graph with snapping labels and zooming, which is something bog-standard that Google Charts does with a few lines of code.

Why is it almost impossible to do with ChartJS? I'd expect an example like this to exist with a few lines of code, give it a list of [X, Y] points and that's it.

I was disappointed when I didn't see my wife's book :(

I had the same reaction and then I felt oddly nostalgic when I landed on an Amazon page that dealt with books.

Can anyone give me alternatives to Google Charts? I've tried plotly and I think it's unwieldy for consumer facing plots. Plus the documentation is worse

Anekdote: Title changed from "Amazon Charts" to "Top 20 Most Sold and Most Read Books of the Week"

Same here; I thought the page was inaccessible and this had to be some fancy way of 404.

Yep. Was about to say the same thing

Totally - after seeing the list I was like, oh it's about THAT part of Amazon.

Amazon tracks what & when you read on kindle but doesn't share that information with you. I wrote a little script that extracts and visualizes your reading history:

- http://roadtolarissa.com/kindle-tracker/

- https://github.com/1wheel/kindle-tracker

"Oh, the Places You Go" being in the top twenty sold reminded me that it's graduation season.

I feel silly for initially underestimating the amount of overlap between the Most Sold books and Most Read books. I assumed the Most Sold would be more pretentious than the Most Read books. Still surprised there's not at least one Danielle Steele (or equivalent) in Most Read

There's also a slight difference in between the most sold and read lists -- sold is all books (Kindle, physical, bulk buys, etc) while read is Kindle-only (because there'd be no way for Amazon to know you read a physical book except self-reported through Goodreads)

It could account for a few of the discrepancies, too. I'd expect "Oh, the Places You'll Go" is most likely going to be physical purchases for graduates, so I wouldn't expect it to show up in read even if all the grads read their copies.

Minor quible: most read is Kindle and audible ("into the water" was heard more often than read).

Oooh good catch, I missed it on my quick scan. I'd love to be able to break it down more than just Fiction/Nonfiction into listening vs hearing, various sources, etc.

I am sure, the data includes the 'read data' from Goodreads, they own the service.

I highly doubt it. Firstly, the description only mentions Kindle and Audible (which I missed on first reading), and Goodreads is self-reported so Amazon would have no way to know if the book was actually read, or more importantly when it was read, since it acts as a bookcase. I know a few of people who have backfilled books they read on Goodreads, for example.

Isn't that what a 'smart home' is for?

Give it a couple more years, maybe. Amazon just announced their echo cams

Watch out though - for children's books the most read list doesn't have huge overlap with the most loved list.

Children don't tend to buy their own books, and sometimes don't get to chose what books to read.

http://whatkidsarereading.co.uk/the-books-children-love-to-r...

EDIT: Fucking hell I hate this website now.

Compare the older much more usable version: https://web.archive.org/web/20151203123900/http://whatkidsar...

Did you miss "Beach Lawyer"?

The only place that book will go is the dumpster or local used book store.

Why is this so highly upvoted ? this is just a standard best seller list, for books. What's so interesting about it ?

Seems like Amazon is trying to replace every book's "NY Times Bestseller" with "Amazon Bestseller"? Another move by Amazon to more deeply penetrate consumer culture with a quick hack.

The NYT Bestseller list is human curated instead of just ranking the raw sales numbers.[1]

If the Amazon ranking is based on pure order count[2], Amazon Charts would be an interesting alternative list. It can't fully "replace" the NYT list because I assume many readers want that newspaper's editorial filtering.

[1] https://booklaunch.com/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-an...

Good question, and just like any chart...ahem, Billboard...I'm initially skeptical about the integrity of the methodology. As in, there are lots of reasons to fudge numbers or engage in marketing tactics rather than straight factual reporting. Caveat Emptor.

This can't be new can it? I assumed something like this had been out for a while; maybe novel because it's weekly?

This front-end is new, but they've been crunching sales hourly for each category for over a decade. They've made the bestseller list both more prominent and less specific (you can infer less data from these charts than you could by tracking Zeitgeist lists).

Wow, I guess I'm both surprised and not surprised to see the Harry Potter series in 5 of the 20 top read fiction spots.

The Harry Potter books were just released on Kindle Unlimited about a month ago. Its not surprising that they are all up in the top 20, since people are going to read them right after release. It the exact ones in the exact order are likely something to do with the average rate people read at.

It benefits Amazon to sell more head vs. tail items, easier warehouse and inventory planing. Amazon's "suggestions" and charts create a self-fulfilling optimization loop. Also factor in other variables like which publishers they have a better relationship with, etc.

Surely "most read" is based off Kindle statistics where warehouse and inventory planning don't really matter. And they're not in the "most sold" since, presumably, everyone already owns them who would consider reading them.

> And they're not in the "most sold" since, presumably, everyone already owns them who would consider reading them.

Also the Harry Potter books are part of the Prime lending library / Kindle Unlimited, so Prime members can read it for free without buying.

(Plus if I try to buy Kindle versions, I'm redirected - by Amazon! - to the 3rd party Pottermore website instead. Which, when I click on it, gives me an error at gbp.shop.pottermore.com that "The page you requested does not exist.")

I'd assume Goodreads which they own is factored into those statistics.

You are missing the point I think. Potter books aren't in the top 20 sold books, only the most read.

What's up with Order of the Phoenix in the highest spot, though? I thought it was easily one of the worst of the series, and Goodreads ratings more or less agree with me, ranking only Chamber of Secrets lower.

Order of the Phoenix gets a high spot on every list.

For example: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1.Best_Books_Ever

#2 on that list. I always wondered the same, but could never reach a conclusion why it seemed like it was always rated above the rest of the series.

It is definitely the one that turned the series from "saving the school" to "saving the world" and the series made a sharp turn after that one. That's the best reason I could come up with.

I think it's the best of the series, but I find that when conversation turns to Harry Potter, I'm often alone in my view.

Same. Was my favorite (at least better than all the preceding books), but many others disagree complaining about Harry being "emo".

weird, basically everyone I know says it's the best in the series

Count me in the "worst" bucket. I liked the first four books (and, oddly, the sixth).

I find that most people either rank it first in the series, or somewhere near the bottom with no real in-between. I think it's the finest book in the series, my girlfriend thinks it's the worst.

From personal experience, it seems that more people find it to be the best than the worst, but there's a lot of disagreement.

Having done analysis on Amazon books sales I'm very surprised they decided to filter out harlequin style romance novels. They are easily the top selling Kindle category.

Makes a lot of sense. The last thing Amazon would want is for Kindles to become known as smut readers.

And it's the last thing Kindle-owning smut readers would want.

So, a win-win, right?

Having seen a few romance novel reader's Kindle suggestions, Amazon isn't shy about promoting the genre to the right audience.

The knowledge that they're censoring the list is big for me. Especially since they don't appear to even acknowledge it. Instead of being an honest look at what people find enjoyable to read, how can I trust it to be anything other than purely manufactured marketing? These are the top 20 most read books! (out of the 20 books we were willing to put on this list)

They don't show adult novelties on their main website either, you have to dig and search for them. Many companies censor adult items. I would fully expect they would keep sexually explicit or pornographic books off of the list.

It's not that I have a problem with them keeping sexually explicit books off the list. The problem is that the criteria for filtering is not disclosed. Therefore the list cannot be "trusted" in the sense that it can be believed to be displaying what it says it's displaying. In fact, we know at least in one sense it's not displaying what it claims to display.

They're not shy about promoting it to me, either, and I have never purchased a book in that genre and never plan to.

I have accidentally purchased some fantasy novels with gratuitous sex scenes. I wish I hadn't, and I wish this was easier to avoid doing.

Unfortunately, to Amazon, and possibly to a lot of female authors, there doesn't seem to be a big difference between the "fantasy" and "romance" genres. Check out the bestsellers in "fantasy" sometime.

That is super annoying. I've never bought a book with any smut in it, but when I browse the best selling and recommended fantasy section, it's mostly sex books with werewolves and vampires.

I believe you, but it doesn't necessarily follow that Amazon is filtering them out; perhaps no single harlequin title had enough sales to break into the top 20.

Love the title of Neil Degrasse Tyson's book "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry". So apt for today's readers.

Maybe "for people in a hurry" will become the new "for dummies" franchise? I did a quick search on Amazon for the quoted phrase, there are very few books with that title (although someone called Lynda Hudson seems to have cashed in on the phrase).

Every new iteration of book charts completely mixes up my intuitions on which books are there, how long they stay, and how contemporary they are.

For instance, I thought after Bill Gates tweeted his regard for Pinker's Better Angels book, that would be in the top. I would not have expected "Nudge" to be there, but not (for instance) one of Gladwell's books or Freakonomics.

Fiction wise, I can see the effect that TV and movies exert but, with the exception of Potter, it seems they have to be on the air now. (Q: Will Game of Thrones show up when the show starts?)

> (Q: Will Game of Thrones show up when the show starts?)

Not unless GRRM finally finishes The Winds of Winter. The show went completely off the reservation last season, and this one is in completely uncharted waters. At this point, reading the books is only going to infuriate you when you see the show.

I am a huge fan of both, and am willing to forgive him.

I will say that I think the mechanism by which the shows push the books up the charts is to attract new readers to an old property. So someone who watches the show and wants more might pick up the first book and go from there.

Better Angels is way too dense for me to imagine it ever getting up towards the top of the bestseller lists. Gladwrlls stuff is a lot more tuned for mass appeal.

I actually thought it might appear in the purchase list but not in the read list, or perhaps at a lower spot on the read list.

The divergence in the lists makes for some great speculation.

> Better Angels is way too dense for me to imagine it ever getting up towards the top of the bestseller lists.

If Oprah recommended a book, a lot of people would buy it even if they had no intention of reading it, and similarly for other major cultural figures.

Ah thanks for the info. I have no idea what books Oprah recommends but I'm surprised this was one of them. I've read it, and I liked but not loved it, but it certainly wasn't in line with what my vague understanding of Oprah's book club was.

I'm not claiming that Oprah recommended any book. I'm saying that "Better Angels is too dense to be a bestseller" doesn't work as a counterargument to "a celebrity recommended it, so I thought Better Angels would have better sales".

I disagree. The reason I was surprised when I thought you were saying Oprah recommended it is that Oprah doesn't really recommend books like this. That's not unrelated to the fact that her audience would think "man, Oprah's book recs suck" if she kept recommending books too dense for her audience.

Of the millions of people who bought Obama's biography, how many do you think read it? It's dense. But for a lot of people, the point of buying a book is to let other people know that you bought it.

Amazon continues to underwhelm with their lack of delivery on the potential presented by their vast store of purchase history. In some ways, this justifies their high stock price as they have this valuable asset they have yet to tap. Some day they will turn their gaze towards unlocking its potential. In the meantime, it reeks of incompetence at worst or a puzzling lack of focus at best when they keep urging me on my Kindle lock screen to buy a self-published bodice-ripper or diapers when nothing in my purchasing history could possibly suggest this as a good use of advertising effort.

Indeed. I trialled the Amazon Prime Kindle library and trying to browse what was on offer just brought me to page upon page of what I can only describe as 'shite'. Endless self-published thrillers and erotica with stock photo covers. Why their recommendation algorithms failed so spectacularly in that case I can only wonder (and before you ask, that is not my normal reading material!)

The moral of the story is that if you want a book to become popular and go mainstream you need to make a movie or tv show about it first...

It doesn't matter if the cinematic version is good or not, a lot of people will read the book only to be able to complaint about how they screwed it with the script and be that one friend that is the authority about X or Y show, because you know... he read the book...

Up Next: Harry Poter And The Bayesian Statistics

"Harry Poter And The Bayesian Statistics"

Already been written: http://www.hpmor.com/

The more you know... hahaha

I found the prominence of the agent's name noteworthy. Compare to the NYT Bestsellers list where the agent name is missing: https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/?_r=0

Is Amazon doing this because Amazon envisions a future where publishers aren't important but agents still are?

Amazon used to have "what people in your city are buying?" charts when it was still a bookstore. I loved it, so much more useful than generic bestseller list. I think privacy concerns killed it....

What people are reading ... makes me want to rip all my Kindle/Google/Nook books using DRM removal tools and read them in a reader app that doesn't report all my metrics back.

c'mon man. Myself and everyone else are dying to know what you're reading.

You know it's not even the individual thing. It's the fact that our miniscule data is used to track how entries countries are moving and thinking at scale (although in this case, only for Kindle customers). That should worry us.

Having most read vs most sold is an interesting delta that only Amazon can really do. It would be interesting if they publicized other stats like "most/least completed"...

Average number of pages they read before giving in....

Very strange UX, too much whitespace, too much info hidden behind non-obvious clickable regions. Rating stars too small. Doesn't feel like Amazon.

I don't get it. Why is there no price for any edition of the books listed?

Also, the two buttons (one shaped like a shopping cart, the second one shaped like a book) made me think that the first one is to add the book directly to a cart, and the second one to download a sample to my Kindle. But nope, the first one brings you to an actual Amazon page about the book, and the second one, even though it's located on read.amazon.com subdomain (the same one used for Kindle's Cloud Reader) has a different interface underneath it, not tied to your Kindle account. I've noticed that because Chromium is "not supported" while read.amazon.com is supported just fine when viewing it in Chromium.

Hovering over these buttons gives me no indication of what those buttons were and I had to apply the "click and see what happens" tactic.

I love it, actually. It feels very non-Amazon, but in the best way. I find their website to be far too information dense and confusing when I'm just browsing for popular books, to the point where I just use goodreads instead of bothering with the Amazon site at all.

This has all of the information I want - popular books - and nothing more.

It looks like a new front-end on Zeitgeist (which looks like it's completely disappeared from the category pages).

I'm pretty disappointed in the performance just from poking around a little.

There's a noticeable delay switch from Most Read to Most Sold and from Fiction to Nonfiction.

My Dev Tools are showing it takes ~500-700ms for that switch to occur.

Note that this page is separate from a landing page (like the front page or a category) and a product page. Those have very strict requirements for how long a page component can take to render. This one is allowed to break the rules.

I wonder what they've got backing these pages. DynamoDB? memcached in front of S3? Redshift or AWS Lambda?

Interesting that what are essentially tabs or buttons are implemented as full server round trips. Seems like Amazon generally prefers that methodology over client side tab switching. Not sure why, when they could probably load what is essentially static information and just show/hide the containing elements.

The alternating binary star colors on the hover state almost create a strobe effect. For a moment, I thought the rating reversed on hover and I had to pause and analyse what was going on.

Says something that my immediate reaction was that this would be a web service to create charts. And my next thought was that they'd all probably default to not having a Y-axis ;-)

SO much harry potter.

Ironically, that series is one of the cultural artifacts of the late-90s that fueled the growth of e-commerce. I remember ordering a copy of the first Harry Potter book from Amazon just for the novelty of shopping online.

Late 90s? Is it really that old?

I'm old.

When HP came out I thought it was a series for children, and I never picked it up. Some of my friends did, though.

Someday I'll get around to it.

I was expecting Kotlin books.

Anyone has any recommendations on the top non-fictions books on this list?

Maybe one of the first pieces of non-shit UI work I have seen from Amazon

That's funny how the titles aren't actual links. Oh, well.

Really? The data is only grouped by week? Despite how much I'd love to read 52 books a year, the actual number is closer to 10.

Best books of the month/year is an order of magnitude more useful to me than what people are reading this week.

I also prefer seeing how my information ages:

http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-nonfiction/

I'm more inclined to the Board's list than the (self-selecting, possibly motivated) Readers'.

WEF have a list of the 20 most influenctial books:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/11/the-20-most-influenti...

Wikipedia has an (IMO) fascinating list of the most-sold books of all time. The Bible and Quotations from Chairman Mao (a/k/a "The Little Red Book") each have claims of over 1 billion volumes (1-6 being the range) sold. The next highest-selling book, Don Quixote, at 500m copies.

Contrast that with the most-viewed YouTube video of all time -- Gangnam Style has amassed 2.8 billion views in five years. That's still the YouTube record so far as I'm aware.

That makes me wonder what the highest number of impressions of any one media work has been.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0

Did anyone else think this would be a javascript library?

And how many of them are available in Kindle Unlimited?

I checked the most read non-fiction and only one is available on Kindle Unlimited: #17, Think and Grow Rich.

I like the idea of seeing books people actually read. There are some notable cases of books that sell but are never read...

Lots of confusion if this is a JS charting library.

Mods, Please expand on title and add - The Top 20 Most Sold & Most Read Books of the Week

So "most read" doesn't include people who actually read physical books! Just people who listen to books via audible, and people who swipe pages via kindle ( ok that still counts as reading, but real reading in my books ahem...would definitely count people reading a real book).

"most sold" is problematic as well - everytime you download a free sample, it is counted as sold?!!! I probably download 10 free samples every month, end up actually buying very few. Yet I have been "sold" all these books ?!! Come on.

That said, as a newly naturalized citizen who is still trying to find his bearings in this country, the taste of the public fills me with despair - same formulaic Baldacci James Patterson Stephen King on every list. Even the nonfiction isn't much better. Maybe HN should do one of these charts - you can at least get a few books actually worth reading.

There's a reason that traditional dead-tree bookstore bestseller lists were called "bestsellers" and not "bestreaders".

Some information is ... difficult to acquire.

Though spending patterns are at least a form of honest signalling of intent, regardless of fulfillment or achievement.

Perhaps your idea of something "worth reading" differs from the average person. Either way, no real benefit in despairing over what other people choose to purchase/read. Maybe you have a unique taste in books, that's a good thing!

And how do you propose Amazon tracks if someone has actually read every page of a physical book? Even if they wanted to include that, there is no reasonable or trustworthy way to get that data.

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