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Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid leads Amazon's bestsellers list
Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid (Bookouture) has topped Amazon’s bestsellers list, followed by It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (Simon & Schuster UK), who is featured twice in the top five, with It Starts With Us (Simon & Schuster UK) in fourth place.
According to Amazon, the ongoing success of these titles demonstrates how social media drives book sales. The list also shows the impact of adaptations on sales, with Richard Osman’s books "benefiting from the announced adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club series", and We Solve Murders (Viking) emerging as the fifth bestselling title.
The Amazon Books Most Sold list ranks books according to the number of print and e-book copies sold and pre-ordered between 1st January and 5th December 2024, while Amazon’s Most Read charts rank titles by the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners each week, including through subscription programmes such as Kindle Unlimited and reading with Prime.
Romantasy dominated the fiction category, with Sarah J Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses (Bloomsbury) emerging as the third-most popular title, and multiple books from the series featuring in the top 20. Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing (Piatkus) and Iron Flame (Piatkus) also performed well on Amazon, with both titles featuring on the top 20 list.
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Meanwhile, cookbooks topped the non-fiction category, with Pinch of Nom Air Fryer by Kate and Kay Allinson (Bluebird) and Nathan Anthony’s Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Air Fryer Book (Ebury Press) "capitalising on the appliance’s promise of energy-efficient, economical cooking". So Good by nutritionist Emily English (Seven Dials) was the second bestselling cookbook in the list, while food science books such as Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People (Penguin) and Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook (Jonathan Cape) further point to an interest in food and health.
Moreover, Amazon’s Most Read list showcases a mix of classics, mysteries and fantasy series. J K Rowling dominates the list, joined by Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series (Bloomsbury) and Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune (Gollancz). Thrillers and mysteries such as The Thursday Murder Club (Viking), The Housemaid, and Alice Feeney’s His and Hers (HQ) highlight the genre’s appeal, while James Clear’s Atomic Habits (Random House Business) rounds out the list, reflecting the appetite for self-improvement titles.
"From the surge of popularity for romantasy, to our continued love affair with cosy crime, we’re seeing how our nation’s reading habits are a means of escapism and perhaps a much-needed departure from day-to-day reality," commented Zak Watts, UK Books country manager at Amazon. "The remarkable success of authors like Rebecca Yarros, Sarah J Maas and Emily English shows how social channels like TikTok and Instagram shape the publishing landscape, while news of adaptations are helping to drive further success for the likes of Richard Osman, who has five books in the top 50 bestselling books this year."
