Android is installed on over 87.6% of all smartphones that have been shipped out in 2016 and Google Play Books comes preinstalled on all of these devices. You would figure that their digital bookstore would be doing really well, but this is not the case. Google Play Books has the smallest market share in the United States and Canada, accounting for only 1-2% of today’s eBook market.
Despite Google not having much of a footprint in the United States the company has just announced their top 5 list today, which gives us a sense on what is selling. It seems as though Google is not only counting books in their sales data, but also graphic novels.
1. DEADPOOL KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE by Cullen Bunn
2. HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne
3. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN: A NOVEL by Paula Hawkins
4. THE ART OF WAR by Tzu Sun
5. ME BEFORE YOU: A NOVEL by Jojo Moyes
What is surprising about this list is that the only book that came out in 2016 was the Harry Potter screenplay. Most of the other books were published between 2012 to 2015 and the Art of War was published in English in 1910.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
