Amazon recently released its best-selling books of 2013, and surprisingly, the top book was a self-help guide published by the pollsters at Gallup.
The retail giant has published its best-sellers from every year since 1995, and looking at each year’s top book is an interesting trip through pop culture history. Starting with the third Harry Potter book in 1998, every single installment of the series garnered the top spot the year it was published. If you go all the way back to 1995 and 1996, the best-selling books are about how to build websites, perhaps more a reflection of the people ordering books online at the time than their broader popularity.
2013
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Published in 2007)
2012
Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy by E L James (2012)
2011
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011)
2010
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson (2010)
2009
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (2009)
2008
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (2008)
2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (2007)
2006
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Collins (2001)
2005
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (2005)
2004
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003)
2003
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (2003)
2002
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins (2001)
2001
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson (1998)
2000
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire by J. K. Rowling (2000)
1999
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (1999)
1998
A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (1998)
1997
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997)
1996
Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design by David Siegel (1996)
1995
How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site by Lincoln D. Stein (1995)
