These were the bestselling books of 2024.
There are the best books of the year, and then there are the most popular. Print books had a relatively good year in 2024; as Publishers Weekly reports, sales rose by less than 1%—which isn’t much, but represents the first increase in three years. Which books were pushing the change? Here are the 10 biggest bestsellers of 2024, according to Publishers Weekly, with data provided by Circana:
1. Kristin Hannah, The Women – 1.5 million copies
2. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses – 1.3 million copies
3. Dav Pilkey, The Scarlet Shedder (Dog Man #12) – 1.25 million copies
4. Freida McFadden, The Housemaid – 1.1 million copies
5. James Clear, Atomic Habits – 982k copies
6. Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us – 931k copies
7. Rebecca Yarros, Iron Flame – 877k copies
8. Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing – 810k copies
9. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury – 791k copies
10. Colleen Hoover, It Starts with Us – 757k copies
(Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Book, which sold about 1.2 million copies, is not counted by Bookscan as it was exclusively sold at Target.)
Over at Publishers Lunch, Katy Hershberger points out that only about 29 percent of the 200 bestselling books of 2024 were actually published last year—the rest were backlist. (This is a slightly larger share than 2023, for whatever it’s worth.) So the list of the 10 biggest new bestsellers of 2024 looks a little different, though The Women is still at the top. Here’s the list of the bestselling new books of 2024, according to Publishers Lunch:
1. Kristin Hannah, The Women (St. Martin’s, 2/6)
2. Dav Pilkey, The Scarlet Shedder (Dog Man #12) (Graphix, 3/19)
3. Jeff Kinney, Hot Mess (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #19) (Amulet, 10/22)
4. Laura Nowlin, If Only I Had Told Her (Sourcebooks Fire, 2/6)
5. Freida McFadden, The Housemaid Is Watching (Poisoned Pen, 6/11)
6. Dav Pilkey, Dog Man: Big Jim Begins (Dog Man #13) (Graphix, 12/3)
7. Sarah J. Maas, House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury, 1/30)
8. Alex Hirsch, The Book of Bill (Hyperion Avenue, 7/23)
9. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin Press, 3/26)
10. Freida McFadden, The Teacher (Poisoned Pen, 2/6)
The only two books on the list that also made it onto our compendium of the critics’ favorite books of the year? The Women and The Anxious Generation.
