Regional language book sales rose by 350% in 2015: Amazon poll

Bengaluru: The number of test prep books sold recorded a more than four-fold increase in 2015 from the previous year, according to Amazon.in ‘Reading Trends Report’.

E-commerce marketplace Amazon.in conducted a readers poll on its website where it invited people to vote for their favourite book across nine categories. The poll ran for 11 days, between 4 and 14 December.

“It is indeed a matter of pride that Indian writers are among the most read authors for the third consecutive year,” Noor Patel, director of category management at Amazon India said in a statement.

Book sales in regional languages rose by 350% in 2015 from a year ago. Translations of The Secret of the Nagas by Amish Tripathi continued to find a place among the top three best-sellers in various vernacular languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Marathi for the third consecutive year along with Immortals of Meluha by the same author, the company said.

Most well-read cities:
National capital region
Bengaluru
Mumbai
Hyderabad
Chennai

First time entrants into top 20 most well-read cities list:
Surat
Bhubaneshwar
Vadodara
Ernakulam
Visakhapatnam

Top 5 Bestsellers of 2015:
Scion of Ishvaku
Manorama Yearbook 2015
Half Girlfriend
Word Power Made Easy
Who will cry when you die?

Top 5 categories of 2015:
Fiction
Children’s books
Exam Preparation
Self-help
Management

*Ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all the physical books sold during 2015.