ANNOUNCING THE BESTSELLING TITLES OF 2017
AND THE CHRISTMAS SEASON
by Stan Jantz, ECPA executive director
The results are in on the Bestselling Christian Books and Bibles of 2017 published by ECPA members. There are several ways to analyze the POS data compiled by NPD BookScan. All of the lists are here for you to review, but we will consider a few different viewpoints to get you started. First is the Top 100 Bestsellers List, which includes books and Bibles from every category.
By Author. The #1 book for 2017 is Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages (Moody), followed by Jesus Calling and Jesus Always by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson), who placed six other books in the Top 100. Chip Gaines (Thomas Nelson) and William Paul Young (Windblown Media) placed two books in the Top 10. Jonathan Cahn (Frontline) has two books in the Top 20, and three Juvenile titles by Lisa Tawn Bergren (WaterBrook) are in the Top 100.
By Category. Fifty-five of the Top 100 are adult nonfiction titles, plus eight books by Sarah Young. That matches the eight fiction titles on the list. Juvenile books and Bibles hold 25 positions overall, including seven Christmas children’s titles.
By Publisher. Twenty-one imprints representing 17 different publishers have books in the Top 100. HarperCollins Christian holds 49 percent of the spots, with Baker Publishing Group, B&H, Worthy, WaterBrook, and FaithWords each placing five or more titles on the list.
By Release Date. Twenty-seven of the Top 100 titles for 2017 were released in 2017. Forty-eight were released in the five-year period from 2013 to 2016, and 25 titles in the Top 100 were released in 2012 or earlier.
Now let’s look at the Top 25 Bestsellers in 2017 in the Nonfiction, Fiction, Juvenile, and Bibles categories:
The Top 25 Nonfiction Bestsellers list reflects the Top 100 list, with the exception of a few fiction titles that are not included.
In the Top 25 Fiction Bestsellers list, 15 spots are held by four authors: William Paul Young with five titles, Wanda Brunstetter (Barbour) with four, and Karen Kingsbury (Howard) and Beverly Lewis (Bethany House/ Baker Publishing) with three books each.
In the Top 25 Juvenile Bestsellers for 2017, The Jesus Storybook Bible takes the #1 position for the second year in a row. Both Patricia A. Pingry and Lisa Tawn Bergren each have three titles on the list. Eight of the titles were published by Thomas Nelson, with six coming from Ideals/Worthy. Six of the Top 25 Juvenile Bestsellers were Christmas themed.
The Top 25 Bible Bestsellers list shows the top selling Bible in 2017 was NIV Adventure Bible by Lawrence O. Richards (Zondervan). There were a total of seven NIV editions in the Top 25 Bibles Bestsellers, followed by six editions of the NLT (Tyndale).
The Top 10 Bible Translations list was topped by the NIV, followed by the NLT, the KJV and the ESV.
2017 CHRISTMAS BESTSELLERS
That’s a nice segue to ECPA’s annual Christmas Bestsellers for 2017, which are based on NPD data from November and December. ECPA curates the data into three different lists: Nonfiction, Fiction, and Juvenile.
An astounding 21 titles in the Top 50 Nonfiction Christmas list were published by Abingdon—five by one author, Adam Hamilton. Ann Voskamp (Tyndale House), Max Lucado (Thomas Nelson), and Mike Slaughter (Abingdon) each have three titles in the Top 50.
The Top 20 Fiction Christmas Bestsellers list includes six titles each from Revell/Baker and HarperCollins Christian. Barbour Publishing placed four books in the Top 20. Finally, Ideals/Worthy and Thomas Nelson each have eight titles in the popular Top 20 Juvenile Bestsellers list.
ECPA congratulates all of the publishers and authors whose sales qualified them to appear on these 2017 Bestsellers lists. The sales of your books and Bibles in all of these categories represent millions of readers whose lives are being impacted by the exceptional content you curate with professionalism and care.