20 Bestselling Fiction Books
Period: May/June - 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: Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone, which was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the “Top 10 Literary Fiction” titles for the fall of 2019, dominated fiction sales.
Nonfiction: Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist is the overall bestselling book for this period. In fact, it is the bestselling book for any period, of the almost 23-year history of our bestsellers list!
Children’s Books: Whose Knees Are These? by Jabari Asim is a 6-time AALBC bestseller and is the bestselling board book on AALBC this year.
Poetry: Reginald Dwayne Betts’ book of poetry Felon leads a list of excellent poetry books sold this period — the best period of poetry sales all year.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
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.