10 Bestselling Nonfiction Books
Period: July/August - 2017
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 titles outsold all other genres this period, led by the strength of Sadeqa Johnson’s 2016 novel Second House from the Corner, which was the bestselling book of all. Nonfiction was the 2nd most popular genre, rebounding from weak sales in May and June of 2017. The bestselling nonfiction book was Ivan Van Sertima’s masterwork, They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, which made our list for the 13th time since 1999! Children’s Books sales, continue to be strong with a nice mixture of new and classic titles with publication dates spanning a period of 50 years. Poetry sells each period for which we report, however sales were insufficient to compile a bestsellers for the genre. The last poetry list was last reported Jan/Feb 2017
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More About our Bestsellers List
View a printer-friendly version or a collage of the book covers.
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.