Ancient Chinese classics and history books ranked as people's favorites for the first time in several years, while film adaptations of books caused novel sales to skyrocket this year, according to the 2016 Mid-year Best-seller lists released by Amazon China (amazon.cn) on Thursday.
Classic works such as My Private Study written by prominent Chinese scholar Wang Guowei and Tseng Kuo-Fan's Family Letters, a collection of letters written by Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) statesman Zeng Guofan ranked high on Amazon China's Weekly and Monthly Best-seller lists, and were listed for the first time on the mid-year list of the Top 100 Best-Selling Print Books.
With The History of China and The Shortest History of Europe ranking high on the list of the Top 10 Best-Selling E-books, history books are making a strong showing when it comes to sales.
Meanwhile, popular TV series and box-office hits have been helping increase sales of related books, be they novelizations of TV or films, or the original books upon which these TV shows or films were based.
The novelization of hit animated film Zootopia ranked in at No.11 on the mid-year list of the Top 100 Best-selling Print Books, while IP novels that have been adapted into popular TV series such as Ode to Joy and Game of Thrones also appear on the list of the Top 50 Most Read E-books.
Sales figures also show that Chinese readers favor self-help books over other genres, with 36 of the Top 100 Print Books being books on self-motivation or featuring soothing feel-good stories that are more relaxing to read.
This same trend is also reflected in e-book sales, where half of the books on list of the Top 50 Most Read E-books are popular psychology books about self-improvement or self-motivation.
Amazon China also released a list of The Most Bookish Cities in China, in which second-tier cities such as Hefei, Zhengzhou and Wenzhou took the lead over Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
