Bullseye, by David Baldacci, spent the most weeks (eight) in the quarter as the top-selling fiction e-book single, according to Thin Reads research. The only other titles in the Kindle Single fiction best-seller list for the quarter were Hidden, by Barbara Taylor Bradford; High Heat, by Lee Child; and The Color War, by Jodi Picoult.
For the quarter, no dominant nonfiction e-book single emerged. Four books ranked as the best-selling nonfiction Kindle Single of Q1 for multiple weeks. They were: Baby Steps, by Mara Altman; Illusions II, by Richard Bach; Estranged, by Jessica Berger Gross; and An Unexpected Twist, by Andy Borowitz.
An exclusive Thin Reads analysis of 2014's first quarter e-book singles revealed that 103 titles were released to the market compared to 84 for the first quarter of 2013, marking a 22-percent rise in year-over-year offerings to consumers. More than one-third of all books released in the quarter were fiction. Roughly 20 percent of all e-book singles published in the quarter were memoirs.
The emergence of Shebooks, a new e-book single company headed by award-winning magazine editor Peggy Northrop, helped drive the surge in titles released in the first quarter. Shebooks was responsible for 17 of all e-book singles in the first quarter, instantly making it one of the most prolific e-book single publishers during the period. This is a significant positive development for readers of e-book singles.
- Richard Bach, Illusions II (nonfiction); the best-selling author's account of his airplane accident.
- David Baldacci, Bullseye (fiction); two assassins-for-hire wind up on the wrong end of a bank heist.
- Barbara Taylor Bradford, Hidden (fiction); a woman keeps a dark secret hidden for years.
- Tony Horwitz, Boom (nonfiction); the Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist travels the length of the Keystone Pipeline in for an in-depth investigative report.
- Greg Iles, The Death Factory (fiction); a former prosecutor goes back to a chilling case in Houston.
- More literary heavyweight novelists published e-book singles. In the first quarter, Karen Russell (Swamplandia) wrote her first e-book single Sleep Donation. And Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin) hit the e-book single market with Gone. Both became Kindle Single best-sellers.
- Amazon continued to push the Kindle Single interview. In the quarter, they released two interviews (Anthony Bourdain and Nikki Finke). Both titles ranked as Kindle Single best-sellers.
- Publishers shunned encore e-book singles (previously published as a chapter in a long-form book). Of the 103 books released in the quarter, only one was previously published in another format