In hardcover, the usual suspects, and more
By Daisy Maryles
What’s new in the hardcover fiction bestsellers of 2010? Very little. Almost every author in the fiction top 30 has been on these charts in previous years—most several times. The sole exception is the #1 fiction bestseller, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, with sales of 1.9 million. Stieg Larsson enjoyed a quadruple play, heading fiction, mass market, trade paper, and an e-book list of bestsellers.
Still, a number of veteran bestselling novelists dominate. Chief among them is James Patterson. With his stable of coauthors, he managed to rack up six of the top 25 fiction bestsellers, with combined sales of 3,332,263. Clive Cussler had four bestsellers in 2010, with combined sales of 1,006,132; Nora Roberts had three, with combined sales of 900,000 copies. And the bestselling female author last year was Janet Evanovich; she had two of the top 15 bestsellers, with sales of more than 1.5 million.
The only novel to make a second appearance in the top 15 is Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. A debut fiction hitting the one million–plus sales mark for the second year in a row, it is also the only hardcover that did not miss a single showing on the 2010 weekly charts.
