You Stumble Across A List of 7,000+ Bestsellers

A guest post from Will Crowley

Hi friends,

Happy (almost) Fourth of July! Quick reminder that two of my favorite Fourth reads are the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglas’s “What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

I’m doing something a little different this week. Will Crowley, an avid reader and What To Read If subscriber, stumbled upon a dataset amassed by The Post 45 Data Collective of 7,400+ titles from the hardcover fiction bestseller list of The New York Times between 1931 and 2020 and analyzed it for us. (You can check out the Python code Will used to run the below analysis here).

Here are three insights Will found:

1. Danielle Steel Owns the Bestseller List

Danielle Steel has had nearly twice as many books crack the list as the author with the second most, Stuart Woods. Steel, who has written nearly 200 novels, also has a very swanky writing desk.

2. Series Authors Have List Longevity

The below graph shows the top ten authors by the average number of weeks per book they spent on the list:

What jumps out is the split of authors known for famous series of books, such as Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling, compared to authors such as Patrick Dennis, who wrote Auntie Mame, and Robert James Walker, of Bridges of Madison County fame, who earned their spots with only one or two books.

3. Harper Lee, Hemingway Stand the Test of Time

Multiple writers — including Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame and spy master John Le Carre — have hit the bestseller list with different books more than fifty years apart.

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Thanks to Will for insights and analysis. I’ll be back next week with book recommendations — and a giveaway.

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