Trends, triumphs of the 2009 book year

Trends, triumphs of the 2009 book year

By Anthony DeBarros, Deirdre Donahue, Carol Memmott, Bob Minzesheimer and Craig Wilson,

USA TODAY

Yes, Stephenie Meyer had another frighteningly good year with her sexy teen vampires and werewolves. And while Twilight is hardly about to fade into black, the mega-series wasn't the only story of the year when it came to best sellers. A couple of chicks named Julie and Julia, a Harvard symbologist who famously cracked TheDa Vinci Code and a wimpy kid and his diary all flexed their muscles in 2009.

Book sales rise from these graves

We have Stephenie Meyer's Twilight vampires to thank, in part, for the fact that at least 17% of all book sales tracked in 2009 were related to vampires (and assorted other undead creatures, including zombies) or the paranormal (including paranormal romances). That was up from 14% in 2008, which in turn was way up from 2% in 2007. Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, which are the inspiration for HBO's True Blood, had nine titles in the top 100 sellers of the year, and P.C. and Kristin Cast, the mother/daughter team who write the House of Night series, had six. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith is No. 48 on the list. Expect that trend to continue in 2010, again thanks in part to Meyer. She may not have a new book coming out (that we know of so far), but Eclipse, the movie based on the third book in the Twilight series, swoops into theaters in June, and the paperback reissue of her 2008 adult hardcover The Host is out April 13.

Here's looking at you, 'Kid' series

As a cartoonist for the University of Maryland newspaper, Jeff Kinney dreamed of drawing his own syndicated cartoon. After scores of rejections, Kinney, 38, ended up as an educational website designer, but kept drawing cartoons and decided to try them as a book. The result: the popular kid series Diary of a Wimpy Kid, begun in 2007 and drawn and written as if by a wisecracking middle-schooler. The third book, The Last Straw, released last January, and the fourth, Dog Days, released in October, both reached No. 1 on the weekly list and were in the year's top 10. Kinney sold more books in 2009 than Dan Brown, who had two novels in the top 100: The Lost Symbol (No. 5) and Angels & Demons (No. 27). Still to come in April: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the movie.

Breakout 'The Help' is still cleaning up

2009's literary breakout? The debut novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett, at No. 20. Set in 1960s segregated Mississippi, this charmer about a group of black maids and the young white woman who records their stories was the tortoise of the list, making slow but steady upward progress thanks to strong word of mouth. Published Feb. 10, The Help hovered below the top 150 until May 28, when it hit No. 142. Clearly connecting with readers over summer vacation, the novel broke into the top 50 on July 23 and has been there ever since, rising as high as No. 13 on Sept. 24. In early 2010 — nearly a year after publication —The Help is making its best showing yet, climbing to No. 5 this week. Not surprisingly, with hardcover sales like this, the publisher has postponed the paperback until January 2011.

The 'Symbol'-ic return of Dan Brown

Turns out supernatural teen love triangles involving vampires and werewolves trump everything — including the return of Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol (No. 5 for the year), Brown's much-anticipated follow-up to The Da Vinci Code featuring Freemason conspiracies and Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, went on sale Sept. 15. It sold more than 1 million copies in hardcover and e-books on the first day, according to his publisher. Symbol then logged an impressive five weeks at No. 1, joining Glenn Beck, Jeff Kinney and Sarah Palin, but it failed to equal Code, which spent 24 weeks in the top spot. In 2004, Brown's best year on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, The Da Vinci Code made up 7% of total book sales.

Comic claims self-help crown

Comedian Steve Harvey laughed all the way to the bank with Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy and Commitment, his blockbuster self-help advice book. Act Like a Lady climbed to the top of USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in March, bumping teen vampire queen Stephenie Meyer from the No. 1 spot, at least temporarily. It ended at No. 9 for the year, the top self-help book on the list, selling twice as much as the closest self-help title, The Last Lecture, which is No. 37. "I'm absolutely stunned at the reception this book has gotten," Harvey told USA TODAY last year. He's working on his second book.

Electing to read the 'right' stuff

Led by Sarah Palin and TV and radio talk-show host Glenn Beck, who each were No. 1 on the list for five weeks, conservatives had a big year in bookstores. Palin's Going Rogue (No. 10) was boosted by her campaign-style book tour. By more than a 2-to-1 ratio, it outsold Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's True Compass (No. 42), published three weeks after his death in August. President Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, first published in 1995, was No. 85 down from No. 20 in 2008. Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter, says, "Once upon a time, people bought political books and memoirs for the ideas and the stories." Now, "they're votes: You support people and positions you agreed with by buying the book."

More books became movie stars

Seventeen of the top 100 books of the year had movie connections, up from 11 in 2008. Top movie-related books? Stephenie Meyer's New Moon (No. 1-selling book of the year) and Twilight (No. 3). But there's not necessarily a correlation between a title's performance at the box office and in bookstores. Yes, New Moon has brought in nearly $300 million so far, but the movie version of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper (No. 12), for example, earned a more modest $49 million.

Other books with big-screen ties:

•The Time Traveler's Wife (No. 14) by Audrey Niffenegger
• Where the Wild Things Are (No. 23) by Maurice Sendak
•Angels & Demons (No. 27) by Dan Brown
• The Lovely Bones (No. 40) by Alice Sebold
• Push by Sapphire, which became the movie Precious (No. 41)
• Watchmen (No. 46) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (No. 74) by Julie Powell

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-01-13-best-selling-books-trends_N.htm?csp=books