Who Topped the New York Times Adult Best-Selling Ficiton List, 2010-19, Men or Women?

I have made a number of posts regarding the nature of the books and authors that have made it to the top of the New York Times Best-Selling Adult Fiction List. These include the age of the authors, the length of stay on top, the length of the books, and the sex of the authors.


In the past, men have dominated that list. For example, in the years 1958 to 1961, and as recently as 1993, no woman author made the top spot on the list for even one week.


Things started to changed in the late nineties. The reason was J.K. Rowling. Her Harry Potter series started dominating the list. The New York Times would not allow this. Kids fluff? Beginning with the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, July 2000, they banished her works from the Best-Selling Fiction List and created the Best-Selling Children's Fiction List.

The exclusion of Rowling was one of the two main reasons why, during the period between 2000-2009, women faired poorly. The other reason was The DaVinci Code, which topped the list for 59 weeks spread out over four years, 4 of those weeks in 2006, 7 in 2005, 28 in 2004, and 20 in 2003.

So, was it really a blockbuster to beat all blockbusters? J.K. Rowling, sold more books in 2003 than did the Da Vinci Code, with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and again won in 2005 with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Yes, Dan Brown has been seen laughing all the way to the bank.

So, let's look at the just-finished period of 2010-2019. Who topped the New York Times Adult Best-Selling List for the decade?

The contest was close. From the period of 2010 to 2018, men were leading, by one week.

In 2019, Delia Owens began a remarkable run with the book, Where the Crawdads Sing, 25 weeks at number one in 2019 and still dominating the list in 2020.

With that bolus, the women won the decade, 268.5 weeks to 253.5 for men. (Books with male and female co-authors, i.e., James Patterson and Maxine Pietro received one half point.)

With so close of totals, I went over the figures of the period 2010 to 2019, raking them to find errors. I did find some, but now am satisfied my tabulations are correct.

Congratulations women!

Female authors were atop the list 268.5 compared to 253.5 for male authors.

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New York Times Fiction List, Male Versus Female Authors.

The Number of Weeks Atop the New York Times Best-selling Fiction Novel List, Males Versus Females.

Above shows the domination of male authors in the period 1979 through 2010 with the red (male author bars) often having more than 40 weeks. In 1993, male authors had 52 weeks. This contrasts to the most recent years, as shown in the graph below.


I have made a number of posts regarding the nature of the books and authors that have made it atop the New York Times Best-Selling Fiction list. These include the age of the authors, the length of stay on top, the length of the books, and the sex of the authors.

I am revisiting this matter due to, in contrast to the early years, women have taken over the top spots in recent years.

The New York Times Bestsellers list first became a national sampling of best-selling books on August 9th, 1942. Men spent more weeks as the author of the number one best-selling fiction book in 51 of the years from 1943 (the first complete year) through 2010 with women dominating in seven years. In ten different years women were shut out with no weeks with the number one novel. More recently, from 2011 onward, women have spent more weeks on top in 5 of 7 years.

A horse race is on. The female dominance began in 2011. However, due to dominance in the year 2010, over the course of the 2010s, males have the overall lead of 209.5 weeks versus 208.5 weeks for women. 

Women have achieved parity so far in the 2010s.

The above expands the right-most portion of the previous graph making it easier to visualize the diminution of male dominance. Since 2011, men have dominated in two years, 2013 and 2017.

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