Deep Thoughts with 100 Scope Notes: The Best Selling Children’s Books of 2019

Publishers Weekly just released their list of the bestselling children’s books of 2019. Click here to see it.

A few random thoughts . . .

Scholastic, Scholastic, Scholastic, Scholastic

The publisher has the top book in all four categories: hardcover frontlist, hardcover backlist, paperback frontlist, and paperback backlist. That’s a lot of books.

The ‘First Picture Book on the Hardcover Frontlist’ Prize Goes to . . .

The latest Pigeon book, The Pigeon HAS to Go to School by Mo Willems. While hardcover backlist has plenty of picture book classics, they’re harder to find on the frontlist.

What’s Old is New Again

While the highest-selling frontlist titles titles get all the attention, the sales numbers drop off fairly quickly on that list. The hardcover backlist is where the books just quietly keep on selling a bunch. Picture book We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, for example, is #32 on the hardcover backlist, with 202,112 copies sold. That number would have placed it #6 on the hardcover frontlist.

What jumped out to you?

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