Best Selling Black Books

This is a corpus of best selling books by Black authors from 2004 through September, 2021. The database includes backlist titles published earlier, but the sales data is from 2004 to September 2021. This was created as a part of an assignment to create a LibGuide for the Pratt Library and Information Studies program.

We defined "best selling" - which is a subjective term in publishing - as books that have sold over fifty-thousand (50,000) copies. We compiled book titles from a combination of best-sellers lists (e.g., The New York Times), publically available lists of books by Black authors from a variety of literary organizations, and by searching the sales of well-known Black authors on NPD Bookscan.

We're sure that we missed some best-selling books by Black authors but to our knowledge this is the first collection of high selling books by Black authors based on actual sales. We hope this will be used as a resource by writers, publishers, marketers, librarians, and anyone interested in the history and legacy of successful Black writers in book publishing.

Note: RTD means 'Retail Sales To Date', and YTD means 'Yearly Sales To Date.' Each column can be sorted by ascending or descending order, or by category, including gender (female or male), type of book (fiction, non-fiction, or poetry), publisher, author, format, imprint, etc.

Imprint

  • Doubleday Books 2
  • Random House 2
  • Ballantine Books 1
  • Crown 1
  • Delacorte Press 1
  • …

Gender

  • Female 6
  • Male 3

Type

  • Fiction · 9 ✖

Publisher

  • Random House · 9 ✖

Format

  • Hardcover · 9 ✖
ISBN ▼ Title Type Author Gender Publisher Format Publication Date Imprint RTD Sales YTD Sales
9780385512725 I Say a Little Prayer Fiction E. Lynn Harris Male Random House Hardcover 2006-05-02 Doubleday Books 64465 0
9780385537070 The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction) Fiction Colson Whitehead Male Random House Hardcover 2019-07-16 Doubleday Books 288192 13899
9780399590597 The Water Dancer Fiction Ta-Nehisi Coates Male Random House Hardcover 2019-09-24 One World 353808 4063
9780525658184 Transcendent Kingdom Fiction Yaa Gyasi Female Random House Hardcover 2020-09-01 Knopf Publishing Group 119973 29120
9780553496680 The Sun Is Also a Star Fiction Nicola Yoon Female Random House Hardcover 2016-11-01 Delacorte Press 231287 2123
9781101902578 I Almost Forgot About You Fiction Terry Mcmillan Female Random House Hardcover 2016-06-07 Crown 59155 0
9781400062898 Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: a Lifetime of Memories With Recipes Fiction Maya Angelou Female Random House Hardcover 2004-09-21 Random House 166212 3
9781400065585 Amazing Peace: a Christmas Poem Fiction Maya Angelou Female Random House Hardcover 2005-12-01 Random House 214574 64
9781984823748 It's Not All Downhill from Here Fiction Terry Mcmillan Female Random House Hardcover 2020-03-31 Ballantine Books 54377 7533