Some Stats In Honor of Book Riot Insiders’ First Anniversary
Time flies when you’re having fun, and that has held true for Book Riot Insiders. On April 11, 2017, we officially launched our exclusive content platform for subscribers, and I can’t believe it’s a year later. One of the biggest perks is the New Release Index, which highlights upcoming titles and is curated by our very own Liberty Hardy. Subscribers can build their own Watchlist to keep track of titles they’re particularly interested in, and I thought it might be fun to look at the data (because I always think it’s fun to look at data! Where my spreadsheet nerds at?). So in honor of Book Riot Insiders’ first anniversary, I present to you the books Insiders were most excited about over the course of the last year, plus some commentary from yours truly. And if you haven’t joined us at Insiders yet, go check it out!
All told, 2,739 individual titles were added to Watchlists from April 11, 2017–April 1, 2018. Editor’s note: OMG SO MANY.
The top 20 most watchlisted titles of our first year were:
…drumroll, please…
1. Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha) by Tomi Adeyemi
2. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
3. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
4. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
5. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
6. Artemis: A Novel by Andy Weir
7. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
8. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
9. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu
10. Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain by Abby Norman
11. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao
12. Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith
13. Force of Nature by Jane Harper
14. Where the Line Bleeds: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
15. Summer Hours at the Robbers Library by Sue Halpern
16. The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by (Daniel) Mallory Ortberg
17. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
18. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black Female and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins
19. Herding Cats: A Sarah’s Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen
20. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
I love the range of this! There are YA titles, literary fiction, nonfiction, science-fiction, fantasy, short stories, essays, you name it.
The top 5 most watchlisted genres were, in order:
1. Fiction
2. Mystery/Thriller
3. Young Adult
4. Autobiography/Biography/Memoir
5. Fantasy
This is perhaps not a surprise in total, but I confess to being surprised at the order. I would have guessed that YA would come second, and maybe Fantasy above Autobio; the more you know!
And now, for the top 5 titles per top 5 genres!
Fiction:
1. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
2. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
3. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu
4. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao
5. Where the Line Bleeds: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
Mystery/Thriller:
1. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
2. Force of Nature by Jane Harper
3. Bonfire: A Novel by Krysten Ritter
4. Origin by Dan Brown
5. A Guide for Murdered Children by Sara Sparrow
Young Adult:
1. Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha) by Tomi Adeyemi
2. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
3. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
4. Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
5. The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan
Autobiography/Biography/Memoir:
1. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
2. Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain by Abby Norman
3. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins
4. I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
5. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
Fantasy:
1. Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha) by Tomi Adeyemi
2. Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
3. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
4. The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
5. The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth) by NK Jemisin
Note: as you can see, this includes both YA and adult fantasy titles.
Some Final Thoughts
We’ve seen time and again that our readers’ tastes are eclectic, broad-ranging, and inclusive. But it’s still nice to see it spelled out with actual numbers. There’s some overlap because many of the books in the New Release Index have multiple genres, but it’s interesting to see where some books shake out. And I’m personally delighted to see many of my favorites from the last year on here!
The moral of the story? Stats are fun, and books are even better.
