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.

Type

  • Fiction · 4 ✖

Publisher

  • Harpercollins Publishers · 4 ✖

Imprint

  • Balzer & Bray/Harperteen · 4 ✖

Gender

  • Female 4

Format

  • Hardcover 4
ISBN ▼ Title Type Author Gender Publisher Format Publication Date Imprint RTD Sales YTD Sales
9780062498533 The Hate U Give Fiction Angie Thomas Female Harpercollins Publishers Hardcover 2017-02-28 Balzer & Bray/Harperteen 1374196 119334
9780062498564 On the Come Up Fiction Angie Thomas Female Harpercollins Publishers Hardcover 2019-02-05 Balzer & Bray/Harperteen 192012 8261
9780062667120 I Am Enough Fiction Grace Byers Female Harpercollins Publishers Hardcover 2018-03-06 Balzer & Bray/Harperteen 407728 97653
9780062937407 Kamala and Maya's Big Idea Fiction Meena Harris Female Harpercollins Publishers Hardcover 2020-06-02 Balzer & Bray/Harperteen 85358 29212