20 Bestselling Fiction Books
Period: July/August - 2020
The African American Literature Book Club’s Bestsellers List has been published continuously since 1998. It celebrates the bestselling titles from our curated selection of books written by or about Black people. Learn More below.
★ New: The BLK Bestsellers: America’s Bestselling Books
Fiction: Novelist d. E. Rogers earned the #1 spot on our fiction bestsellers with with his debut novel, Black States of America: Real Black Power. Perennial AALBC favorite author Octavia Butler, makes our bestsellers list for the 3rd time with Parable of the Sower.
Nonfiction: Nonfiction sales have been strong all summer, outselling all other bestseller categories combined. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo was the overall bestselling book. First-time nonfiction bestsellers include, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson and Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad.
Children’s Books: A Black Woman Did That by Malaika Adero leads in the sales of all children’s books, while Whose Knees Are These? by Jabari Asim continues to be the bestselling board book on AALBC.
Poetry: The Collected Poems Of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, the 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Winning Book for Poetry, is the only bestselling book of poetry this period.
More About our Bestsellers List
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You will learn about books selling well in the Black community that may never show up on lists published by corporate entities. Spread the word about our list; don’t let one or two lists, which we don’t control, determine which books are important.
We collect our bestselling titles from all our sales channels. The majority of our sales come from this website and our in-person events. We also include sales generated through our affiliate relationships, including Bookshop.org, Libro.fm (audiobooks), and Amazon.com*.
*For a few years, we actively boycotted Amazon but have discontinued this practice to ensure we do not exclude authors who are exclusive to that platform. We still discourage exclusivity but support all Black authors.