Amazon.in has released its annual Reading Trends Report of the year 2014 on its marketplace. I know some of us may say that this is a list of its sales figures for different cities in different categories. And it is, I also believe. There is a reason because a a lot of us also buy from the competition such as Flipkart and Snapdeal. Despite, it is an interesting list.

Some of the interesting findings of the Amazon.in’s Reading Trends Report 2014   are:

New Delhi NCR tops the list of the Most Well-Read Cities in India; Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad come in at #2, #3 and #4 position. The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all the physical bookssold during the course of the year 2014. The Top 15 Most Well-Read Cities are:

       ​Colaba Conspiracy by Surendra Mohan Pathak, a Hindi book was voted as the most popular book of 2014 in a reader’s poll on Amazon.in. Sorry, you’re not my type by Sudeep Nagarkar; When only love remains by Durjoy Dutta; Half Girlfriendby Chetan Bhagat and Your Dreams Are Mine Now by Ravindra Singh came in top 5 subsequent positions as per the reader’s poll on the most popular books of 2014. The results are based on a poll conducted on Amazon.in from 26th December 2014 to 5^th January 2015. Books lovers from across the country were invited to vote for their favourite books under six different genres: Indian Writing, Biographies, Literature & Fiction, Children’s and Young Adult, Business & Economics and Politics &History. Customers voted for their favorite books amongst 10 books pre-selected, under each category.

The other interesting findings of the poll result as compared with bestsellers in the same genre were as follows:

v  And Then One Day: A Memoir by Naseerudin Shah got the maximum votes in the Biographies category, whereas the highest sales were for Sachin Tendulkar’s Playing it my way.

v  In Business books, the most popular book was another Indian book, Rokda:How Baniyas Do Business. Whereas, the highest selling books were The Small Big by Steve Martin (an Amazon Exclusive) and How Google Works by Eric Schmidt.

v  Politics being a hot genre this year with lots of hi profile books, saw the highest votes for The Accidental Prime Minister by Sanjay Baru (the tell-all book on the Congress regime) and Not Just an Accountant by Vinod Rai (first-hand account of 11^th CAG of India on several corruption scams like 2G, coalgate, civil aviation, etc.)

v  In Children and Young Adult category, the top votes were for The Fault in our Stars, Blood of Olympus and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.

The Top 10 Bestsellers of  2014

Apart from this, Children and Young Adult books is one of the most popular books category on Amazon.in. This is a special focus category for Amazon and has a significant sales contribution on Amazon.in. It is also one of the fastest growing sub-categories within the category. Special contests like the Whipple-scrumptious Roald Dahl Dream London Holiday Contest celebrating 50th anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate factory where 5 kids were sent to London for a special tour with parents and exclusives like Pran Comics and Cartoon Network Comics are some endeavours to generate interest in reading among kids. Within the Children books category, Amazon has created specific sub-stores by age-groups, series and best reviewed books by customers to help parents find relevant books for their children. The Top Bestsellers in this genre in 2014 were, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid :The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney and Pran Comics (the last comics written by the legendary cartoonist Mr. Pran).

Amazon.in has the largest online collection of books in India across languages including three regional language book stores – Hindi, Tamil and Kannada which have found a huge audience, especially in non-metro cities where regional language books have featured in the top ten best sellers list. The best example is the translated version of Amish Tripathi’s ‘Shiva Trilogy’ that continues to be a bestseller in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi as well as Kannada. ‘The Secret’, in its Tamil translation and ‘Yaana’ in Kannada were other top sellers in Indian language books.