Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy is now Amazon’s top-selling book series of all time, outselling the seven-book Harry Potter series, the online retailer announced today. That takes both physical and e-books into consideration. Hunger Games achieved its Amazon milestone with three books over four years compared with J.K. Rowling’s seven over the course of well beyond a decade. Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games movie version of Collins’ first book that opened March 23, 2012 took in $407.4 million domestically and another
$277.1 million overseas. The second part, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is slated to open November 22, 2013. The final book Mockingjay will be filmed in two parts. The eight movies based on the seven Potter books grossed $7.7 billion worldwide (unadjusted for inflation or currency fluctuations). Another top-seller planned for movification is E.L. James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey which has three books out, all of which are currently at or near the top of Amazon’s sales lists and all three books occupy the top 3 slots of the New York Times combined print and e-book fiction and paperback trade fiction sales lists. Producers Mike De Luca and Dana are shepherding Fifty Shades for Focus Features/Universal Pictures.


The success of THE HUNGER GAMES and HARRY POTTER is that they inspire young people to read. Not to mention the movie series are a huge boon for Hollywood.
Given where Amazon’s market share was at the time of the Harry Potter releases versus its share for releases of the Hunger Games trilogy, this is at best an unfair assessment–and at worst misleading.
It should also be said that Amazon just started selling Harry Potter digitally about six months ago plus most people bought Harry Potter in a store as opposed to online.
Well put. 10 points for Gryffindor!
I wonder if they count that the Prime members can read Hunger Games for free?
I was thinking the same thing about Prime. All 3 books had been free for a while. We wouldn’t have read them without that.
“The success of THE HUNGER GAMES and HARRY POTTER is that they inspire young people to read”
Unfortunately the inspiration is only to read poorly written, artistically barren tripe.
I haven’t read the hunger games, but I’ve been reading the Harry Potter series with my daughters have have enjoyed them immensely. And I’ve got a pretty low tolerance for even average writing.
I’m not sure whether you’re one of those people that just likes to bash what’s popular, or what, but I’ve been impressed with Rowlings writing.
And what exactly do you expect a 10 year old child to read?
Agreed Tim – they are much better written than most of the garbage written for adults these days…I’m looking at you Dan Brown!
It’s kinda stupid because when it comes to overall sales there is book series out there that can outsell Harry Potter.Plus HP only released as e-book only a couple (or slighly more)months ago and not even from Amazon!So as much as i love THG it’s not even near to be considered equal with HP!
Awesome.
As much as THG is great, nothing will EVER live up to Harry Potter. First of all, exactly how popular was online purchasing popular at the time of Harry Potter’s prime? And every time a new HP book was released, Potterheads went to the nearest book store to purchase the books, not lazily order it online. Also, I’m willing to bet half of those sales was for e-book versions, while Harry potter didn’t come out in e-book form until a few months ago (on pottermore.com) Honestly, there are billions of more reasons…how THG is aimed at an older audience who have more access to Internet.
Exactly! 100% agreed. Harry Potter is in its own league. Nothing can compare.
At least it’s not twilight…The Hunger Games and harry Potter ftw!
This is depressing. The Harry Potter books are wonderfully written, and with time I’m sure they’ll be regarded as classics. The Hunger Games is female YA twaddle.
Yes…very depressing, indeed.
Harry Potter has only been on amazon for 6 months, HG has been on it for 4 yrs. Also HP is still the most sold book series of all time, by a unbelievably large margin.