20 Bestselling Nonfiction Books
Period: January/February - 2021
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: Limitation of Life by d. E. Rogers the top-selling fiction book does not come out until Mar 23, but sold well due to a $5-off campaign for preorders.
Nonfiction: So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo and Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson were, by far, the bestselling books across all genres this period.
Children’s Books: The inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Amanda Gorman, has three bestselling books that have not been published yet! She is the only author to accomplish this feat.
Poetry: African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song Edited by Kevin Young topped our poetry list followed by (Amanda Gorman’s new collection, Call Us What We Carry. Interest in Gorman’s work surged in reaction to the poem she read during the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
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.