Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Courtenay, Zusak top Better Reading Top 100 survey

Book recommendation website Better Reading has announced the results of its inaugural Top 100 Books survey, which tallied the favourite books of around 5000 Australian readers.

Site founder and director Cheryl Akle said the survey took an ‘egalitarian’ vote on Australia’s most popular books, with respondents varying from ‘stay-at-home mums to digital savvy teens to retired couples and stressed out executives’.

Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One (Penguin) was voted as the most popular book, followed by The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak, Picador), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, various imprints), Outlander (Diana Gabaldon, Arrow) and Cloudstreet (Tim Winton, Penguin). Winton had the most titles in the chart with three. See the full list here.

The list features a mix of literary and popular fiction titles, with general fiction the most popular category, followed by historical fiction, crime and thrillers, and classics. The authors were split almost evenly along gender lines with 49% female and 51% male authors, while the number of books by Australian authors almost equalled those by international authors, with US and UK authors the most popular from the overseas titles.

Akle launched Better Reading in November 2014 with the aim of ‘promoting books, daily, weekly and monthly as well as an annual, month-long promotion dedicated exclusively to Australian stories and authors’. The website had financial support from Hachette Australia, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins. Akle is the former campaign director of Get Reading!, which lost its government funding in the federal budget announced last year.

 

Category: Local news