Namma Bengaluru has raced past last year’s third spot to capture the number one position as the Most Well-Read City in India. The city seems to absolutely love their books according to Amazon.in’s Annual Reading Trends Report for 2017. The city was closely followed by Mumbai with last year’s winner Delhi securing the third spot.

“We are very excited with this year’s Reading Trends Report and are thrilled to see Indian writers among the most read authors for the fifth consecutive year! We are truly committed to helping our customers enjoy their passion for reading by offering them a wide selection of books with unique choices across languages, genres and authors” said Noor Patel, Director Category Management, Amazon India.

Some interesting findings of Amazon.in’s Reading Trends Report 2017 are:

• Exam Preparation books emerged as the most popular genre on Amazon.in while Indian writing gabbed the second spot
• Literature & Fiction, Personal Development and Self Help and Romance categories were ranked #3, #4 and #5 respectively as per the report
• Pune, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Noida and Jaipur also feature in the top 10 cities who have nurtured the love for reading

Best Sellers of 2017

• Savvy Indian citizens seem to be preparing for the Civil Services Exam as Indian Polity (5th Edition) ranked as the top selling book across the country
• Sita - Warrior of Mithila was the top selling book from the new releases of the year and the highest selling fiction book of 2017
• Yet another Exam Preparation book Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis’s  came in close at #3, followed by  The Power of your Subconscious Mindand Think and Grow Rich
• Last year’s best seller, Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl, continued to rank among the top 10 bestsellers, holding the spot at #6
• Only 3 fiction books made it to the top 10 most selling books on Amazon.in (Amish’s Sita - Warrior of Mithila, Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl and This Is Not Your Story by Savi Sharma)

Readers’ Poll – Popular Books of 2017

Amazon.in conducted a Readers’ Poll on its website inviting readers to vote on their favorite book across eight categories. Each category had the top 5 best-sellers of the respective genre and readers were asked to vote for their favorite among these. The poll ran for 10 days (from 13^th – 22^nd December 2017) and received an overwhelming response from customers.

• This Is Not Your Story by Savi Sharma is the most popular book of 2017 with the highest votes across categories
• Sita - Warrior of Mithila by Amish received the second highest votes followed by Origin by Dan Brown
• Under Biographies, An Unsuitable Boy by Karan Johar was voted as the winner
• I Do What I Do by Raghuram G. Rajan emerged as the winner under the Business category
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway by Jeff Kinney won maximum hearts under Children’s books category
• Under Hindi books - Heera Pheri by Surender Mohan Pathak topped the poll
• Origin: Number 5 of the Robert Langdon Series by Dan Brown won most votes for Literature & Fiction by International Authors; while This Is Not Your Storyby Savi Sharma and Sita - Warrior of Mithila by Amish Tripathi placed #1 and #2 respectively under Fiction by Indian authors
• In the Non- Fiction category India's Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes by Shiv Aroor won the readers hearts
• Our Story Needs No Filter by Sudeep Nagarkar topped the poll in the Romance book category
• How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life by Lilly Singh was voted as the winner under the Self-Help category

Trendspotting 2017

Exam Preparation books emerged as the most popular genre on Amazon.in. The Top Bestsellers in this genre in 2017 were, Indian Polity (5th Edition), Word Power Made Easy, General Knowledge 2018, A Brief History Of Modern India (Old edition) and Certificate Physical and Human Geography.

Personal Development & Self Help and Romance books featured as the second and third most popular genres on Amazon.in.

Children and Young Adults literature ranked sixth in popular genres across all cities. Amazon.in is India’s largest children’s book store comprising of millions of titles offered by over 12,700 sellers. With this vast selection of books, young readers’ changing interests and varying reading levels makes finding the right book particularly challenging for parents as well as children. Amazon.in recently introduced ‘Children’s Bookshelf’, which makes buying the right book for the children easier. Here, parents can discover best recommendations for all the reading needs of their child at one store.

Indian Language books - Language translations of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ ranked among the bestsellers in various vernacular languages including Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Bengali and Gujarati. Last year’s bestseller – the translation of ‘The secret’ continued to be favoured in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Kannada

Amazon.in offers over 12 million books across languages including eight regional language book stores - Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam. These stores have found a huge audience, especially in non-metro cities where regional language books have featured in the top ten best sellers list.