Top 200 YA Novels of 2010

USA Today just published their list of the top 100 bestsellers of 2010. Publishers Weekly  and other places will soon follow. But sales don’t always capture the full picture. Some books may be purchased once and read once. Others are passed around until they’re ragged. Furthermore, many books sell well over a number of years but don’t get the volume in any week or year to put them on the list. That’s why I like to also look at circulation numbers. And I just happen to have the YA circulation numbers for the Logan, Utah library (thank you Super Librarian Melanie), which serves the 115,000 folks of Cache County, 50,000 of which are in Logan itself. Not a bad population size to get an idea of what’s being read.

Of course, I know each area in the country will have a slightly (or hugely) different list, which makes sense because tastes differ from region to region (for example, I’m betting Chris Heimerdinger isn’t really big in, say, Alabama), but also because collections differ as well. For example, I was surprised Dan Wells didn’t show up with I Am Not A Serial Killer, but the Logan library doesn’t even have that book. So this method does have limitations. It would be nice to get a national breakdown. But until someone is able to cobble that together, this gives a good picture of what’s being read in this part of the world. Regardless of where you live, this should constitute a list of books that ought to be great reads for teens and adults.

In 2010, 3,574 YA titles were checked out a total of 33,156 times (by adults and youth–whoever has a card). Books in the collection but not checked out didn’t make the list, of course. Here are the top 200 books. The Total column shows how many times the book was checked out. % shows what percent of the total circulation that represents. Rank is rank. I was very happy to see quite a few Utah authors (or former Utahans) on this list. Congrats to the following (# titles in top 200):

• Shannon Hale (6)
• Jessica Day George (6)
• Stephenie Meyer (5)
• Brandon Sanderson (3)
• Mette Ivie Harrison (3)
• Aprilynne Pike (2)
• Lisa Mangum (2)
• Chris Heimerdinger (2)
• Jack Weyland (1)
• James Dashner (1)

BTW, here are the companion lists: Top 200 YA Authors of 2010 (showing total volume, not by book, but by author) and Top 200 YA Authors of 2010, Part 2 (showing the authors with the most readers per book)

The List

EDIT: 1/13/2011 11:42 AM. I just found out the first set of data I posted included more than checkouts: things like renewals, searches, bills, etc. So the numbers were wacked. This changed both the rankings and the numbers of books included by some of the authors. What you see now are the correct numbers for checkouts.

EDIT: 1/14/2011 3:31 PM. Okay, one more edit. Silly us–we left off books shelved in the “New Book” category. These numbers are checked, double-checked, and rock solid.