This week's Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller List is, in some ways, a tale of three titles: John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, his 2006 novel Looking for Alaska and J. K. Rowling's The Silkworm, published under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
The first two, by Green, occupy the Nos. 1 and 2 positions on this week's list. The Fault in Our Stars has had a strong showing in recent weeks, in no small part because of the success of the film adaptation in theaters now. It's less certain why the back-list title has made such a comeback, but if Looking for Alaska is riding on the newer book's coattails, it could prove a phenomenon publishers will look to replicate.
The two ebooks by Green are among the impressive 13 Penguin Random House titles within the top-25.
The Silkworm, on the other hand, is noteworthy for its absence. The hotly anticipated title debuted last week, but with Amazon barring pre-orders (which have a significant impact on ebooks' Best-Seller List performance) in the midst of its dispute with Rowling's publisher Hachette, the book clocks it at just No. 30 this week.
Crunching the numbers without including Amazon Kindle sales, though, would have put The Silkworm at No. 6. For those looking for a measure of Amazon's clout in the ebook market, this episode is pretty exemplary.
The top ten best-selling ebooks for the week of June 21:
1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Penguin Random House) -- $4.99
2. Top Secret Twenty-one: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich (Penguin Random House) -- $11.84
3. The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) by Donna Tartt (Hachette) -- $7.99
4. Mr. Mercedes: A Novel by Stephen King (Simon & Schuster) -- $11.99
5. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (Penguin Random House) -- $5.99
6. Written in My Own Heart's Blood: A Novel (Outlander) by Diana Gabaldon (Penguin Random House) -- $11.99
7. Divergent (Divergent series) by Veronica Roth (HarperCollins) -- $4.99
8. Insurgent (Divergent series) by Veronica Roth (HarperCollins) -- $6.99
9. All Fall Down: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner (Simon & Schuster) -- $11.04
10. Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn (Penguin Random House) -- $8.52
See the rest of the top 25 best-selling ebooks this week.