About BookTrendSpy
BookTrendSpy tracks what people are reading around the world, every day, using public charts and open data. It is an independent project run by Daniel Rahl Jackson, a publisher and researcher who wanted a clear, honest picture of the book market without paying for guesswork.
Where the numbers come from
- Apple Books charts. The top 100 paid ebooks in 35 countries, the top 100 free ebooks in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and the top 100 audiobooks where Apple sells them. Apple publishes these charts as public feeds and refreshes them daily.
- Open Library. Daily and weekly trending books from the Internet Archive's free library, and edition counts for classics.
- Wikipedia. Daily pageviews for books with an English Wikipedia article, a good sign of attention beyond the shops.
- Project Gutenberg, via Gutendex. Weekly download counts for public-domain books.
Everything is collected automatically each morning (UTC) and the site updates itself. Nothing is estimated from private data, and no store's pages are scraped.
What we don't claim
Chart positions show how a book ranks against others in one store on one day. They are not sales figures. Apple doesn't publish how many copies a rank represents, and we don't invent sales estimates. Amazon, the largest ebook store, doesn't offer its charts as open data, so it isn't included.
The World Book Index
Each day a book earns (101 − rank) ÷ 100 points in every country where it charts, so number one is worth 1 point and number 100 is worth 0.01. Adding these up across countries rewards books that are read widely, not just in one big market. See today's index.
Using our data
You're welcome to quote figures from this site in articles, research and posts. Please credit BookTrendSpy and link to the page you used. Our monthly reports are written to be cited, and you can embed a live chart on your own site.
Contact and corrections
Spotted a mistake, or want to suggest a data source? Email d.rahl.jackson@proton.me. Corrections are made as soon as they're confirmed.
How the site earns money
Book pages link to stores, and some of those links are affiliate links: if you buy through them, the store may pay BookTrendSpy a small commission at no extra cost to you. Store links never affect rankings, which come only from the data above.