Amazon.in Reading Trends Report 2016
From ‘Dil walo ki Dili’ India’s capital should be renamed to ‘Book Walo ki Dili’ as the city seems to absolutely love their books! For the fourth consecutive year New Delhi NCR has topped the list of the Most Well-Read Cities in India according to Amazon.in’s Annual Reading Trends Report for 2016. The city was closely followed Bangalore and Mumbai as the top three books-loving cities.
Noor Patel, Director Category Management, Amazon India, said, “A love of reading and a profound appreciation for the people who create great books is part of our DNA at Amazon. We are very excited with this year’s Reading Trends Report and thrilled to see Indian writers among the most read authors for the fourth successive year! We at Amazon.in are truly committed to helping our customers enjoy their passion for reading by offering them a wide selection with unique choices across languages, genres and authors.”
Some of the interesting findings of the Amazon.in’s Reading Trends Report 2016 are:
- New Delhi NCR tops the list of the Most Well-Read Cities in India for the fourth consequent year
- Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad come in at #2, #3 and #4 position respectively. The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all the physical books sold during the course of the year 2016
- Karnal, Vadodara and Patna are first time entrants in the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities list having bought more books than Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Lucknow this year
Best Sellers of 2016
- Chetan Bhagat became the most sought-after author on Amazon.in with his book One Indian Girl emerging as the highest selling book of 2016
- At #2 we have J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Parts I & II (Special Rehearsal Edition)
- Interestingly at #3 we have an Exam Preparation book Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis
- At #4 is Robin Sharma’s Non Fiction Who Will Cry When You Die? which was at #7 last year
Readers’ Poll – Popular Books of 2016
Amazon.in conducted a Readers’ Poll on its website inviting readers to vote on their favorite book across eight categories. Each category had the top 5 best-sellers of the respective genre and readers were asked to vote for their favorite among these. The poll ran for 8 days (from 5th – 12thDecember 2016) and received an overwhelming response from the customers.
- Harry Potter And The Cursed Child – Parts I & II by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne & John Tiffany is the most popular book of 2016 with highest votes. It also received highest votes (70%) in Children’s books category
- Under Fiction by Indian Authors it is She Swiped Right into My Heart by Sudeep Nagarkarwhich won the most votes followed by Everyone Has A Story by Savi Sharma
- Under Hindi books – Mujhse Bura Koi Nahi by Surender Mohan Pathak won the most votes
- Cometh The Hour by Jeffrey Archer won the Fiction by International Authors
- In the Non- Fiction category A Feast of Vultures by Josy Joseph won the readers hearts
- Think and Win like Dhoni by Sfurti Sahare is voted as the winner under the Self-Help category
- Coming to the Business The Rise and Fall of Nations by Ruchir Sharma emerged as the winner
- The Kiss of Life by Emraan Hashmi & Bilal Siddiqi was voted winner under Biographies with 47% votes
Trendspotting 2016
Exam Preparation books emerged as the second most popular genre on Amazon.in. This is a special focus category for Amazon.in and has a significant sales contribution on Amazon.in. We launched a new portal called Exam Central earlier this year to help students prepare for these exams. Exam Central provides students and job aspirants with exam related information and preparation books as well as other study material such as e-learning software and e-books that will help them perform better. In addition, the portal also hosts information such as exam calendar, study aid material, free solved papers to download, tips for exam preparation, articles by popular authors & academicians as well as previous years’ toppers and FAQs for students to benefit from. The portal not only caters to the students preparing for entrance exams but also for people preparing for the various vacancy exams conducted by government departments/ PSUs etc.
– The Top Bestsellers in this genre in 2016 were, Word Power Made Easy, Manorama Yearbook 2016, Indian Polity 4th Edition, Railway Recruitment Boards RRB (Non-Technical Cadre) 2016 and A Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning.
Children & Young Adult emerged as the third most popular genre across all cities. Amazon.in is India’s largest children’s book store comprising of millions of titles with over 12,700 sellers on the platform selling books. With this vast selection of books, young readers’ changing interests and varying reading levels makes finding the right book particularly challenging for parents as well as children. Amazon.in recently introduced ‘Children’s Bookshelf’, which makes buying the right book for the children easier. Here, parents can discover best recommendations for all the reading needs of their child at one store.
Indian Language books – Language translations of ‘The Secret’ continues as the top selling book among Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Gujarati language stores (2 years in a row!). The book also continues to trend among the top five bestsellers in various vernacular languages including Tamil, Bengali and Marathi.
Amazon.in has the largest online selection of books in India across languages including eight regional language book stores – Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam. These stores have found a huge audience, especially in non-metro cities where regional language books have featured in the top ten best sellers list.