AbeBooks Lists Its Top Sellers, Most Expensive Books for 2007
- By Michael Stillman
Is writing self-help books one of the 7 habits of highly effective people?
By Michael Stillman
AbeBooks has issued its lists of the bestselling books, most expensive books, and various other "top 10 and 25" lists, such as top authors, signed books, and used books. As the largest of the book listing sites, booksellers will undoubtedly want to know what sells best on Abe. Here is your answer.
The top 25 bestsellers list is filled with recent, highly popular books. This is a very different list from the BookFinder top 10, where the searching (but not selling) site favorites are the very hard to find. Abe's most popular books are not hard to find at all. People just like to buy them on Abe (most likely for the price).
Abe's most expensive sales are an unusual lot. These are not the very expensive books found in the AE Top 500 at auction. Number 1 on Abe would not even come close to cracking the AE Top 500. Abe doesn't sell the most expensive books, just the most. Nevertheless, there are some nice sales here, number 1 reaching almost $25,000. And, while Abebooks has expanded from its site in the English language to sites in German, French and Spanish, they ought to offer one in Latin to accommodate the most expensive ones they sell.
Now, we will look first at the top 10 bestsellers, including the number of copies of each currently offered on the AbeBooks site.
10. The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett. 264 copies offered, priced from $2.30 to $594.
9. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling. 835 copies priced $4.49-$7,125.
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling. 1,332 copies from $1.00-$498,759.
7. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. 270 copies from $10.99-$490.
6. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. 269 copies from $5.71-$7,950.
5. The Purpose Driven Life, from Rick Warren. 1,441 copies from $1.00-$180.
4. Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. 180 copies from $7.00-$138.
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J.K. Rowling. 1,053 copies from $1.00-$8,300.
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, by J.K. Rowling. 461 copies from $10.00-$5,292.
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. 1,825 copies from $1.00-$350.
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AbeBooks Lists Its Top Sellers, Most Expensive Books for 2007
- By Michael Stillman
Einstein was the scientific genius who discovered the theory of relativity.
Rounding out the top 25 were three more Harry Potter books, placing all seven titles within the top 19, the inexorable Tuesdays with Morrie, South Beach Diet, and Who Moved My Cheese, and a couple of classics, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Only the Covey and Warren books were top 10 repeats from a year ago, while last year's winner, The Da Vinci Code, disappeared completely from the top 25.
Next, we look at the highest priced books sold on Abe this past year.
9-10. A tie of two books by Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. $10,500.
8. Biologia Centrali -- Americana, by Godman and Salvin, a Central American butterfly book with 133 color plates. $11,500.
7. Musurgia universalis, by Athanasius Kircher, a circa 1700 encyclopedia of music. $11,728.
6. Relativity: The Special And General Theory, by Albert Einstein, a book you and I will never understand, but we know is important. This is a signed first American edition. $12,500.
5. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, by David Roberts, a first quarto edition of this work by the artist Roberts who traveled to the Holy Land in 1838. $13,000.
4. Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae in X Libros Digesta, another work by Athanasius Kircher, this time dealing with optics and astronomy, published in 1671. $14,375.
3. Navis stultifera a domino Sebastiano Brant primum, edited by Jodocus Badius, a 1497 translation of Brant's "Ship of Fools," with woodcuts by Albrecht Durer. $16,028.
2. The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera, by Doubleday and Westwood, another beautifully illustrated butterfly book, published in 1852. $16,750.
1. Supplementum summae Pisanellae by Nikolaus de Osimo (Nicolaus De Ausmo). Number 1 goes to an item of incunabula, a 1479 edition of a popular update on canon law by an Italian brother of the Franciscan order. $24,941.
Finally, the bestselling authors list reveals the following at one through three: J.K. Rowling (no surprise), Nora Roberts, and William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare!!! Will Nora Roberts be on such a list 400 years from now?
To see all of AbeBooks' top lists for 2007, follow this link: 2007-year-review.
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