Which Bookstores Report The Highest Us Top Selling Books Sales?

I like poking into the small details: for everyday readers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are the two names you’ll see most often when people talk about top-selling books in the US. Amazon’s online dominance and Kindle/audible ecosystem give it a huge share; Barnes & Noble remains the biggest brick-and-mortar bookstore chain. Walmart and Target push a lot of physical copies too, especially for kids’ and bargain titles.

Indie stores matter in ways that pure sales numbers can’t always show — their regional or cult hits sometimes don’t spike in nationwide charts but can create momentum. If you’re trying to follow the data closely, NPD BookScan (used by 'Publishers Weekly') and ABA/IndieBound reports are solid places to start; for ebooks and audiobooks, check Kindle and Audible charts. I usually cross-reference a couple of sources before deciding which list to trust, and that keeps things interesting.

Okay, if you want a straightforward take: Amazon is the single biggest bookstore in the US by sales, so it reports (or drives) a lot of the top-selling title numbers you see. Barnes & Noble is the largest traditional bricks-and-mortar chain and typically shows up second in print sales reports. Then you have Walmart and Target, which move huge quantities of mass-market titles and children’s books, sometimes overtaking other retailers for particular categories.

Beyond that, industry trackers like NPD BookScan (used by 'Publishers Weekly') aggregate sales from many of these retailers and are the source most analysts cite. Independent shops matter a ton culturally and can make a title a hit regionally — their aggregated sales appear in ABA/IndieBound figures and in BookScan when tracked. Also remember format matters: Kindle (Amazon) dominates ebooks, Audible leads audiobooks, and Apple Books/Kobo show up too, so depending on whether you’re looking at print, digital, or audio, the leaderboard of reporting bookstores/retailers changes.

I get a little giddy thinking about how book sales are tracked, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: the biggest players you’ll see at the top of any US sales report are Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with Walmart and Target not far behind in overall volume. Amazon dominates online sales (print, ebooks, audiobooks) by a wide margin, and because so many best-seller lists and retail breakdowns lean on point-of-sale data, Amazon’s numbers often push titles to the very top.

For industry-facing charts you’ll also see NPD BookScan (formerly Nielsen BookScan) referenced a lot — that service aggregates retail data from thousands of sellers and is what trade publications like 'Publishers Weekly' and many publishers use to judge print book performance. Independent bookstores collectively show up via the American Booksellers Association and IndieBound, and their sales matter especially for literary and regional bestsellers. One wrinkle: the 'New York Times Best Sellers' list uses its own methodology and survey mix, so a title can behave differently there versus BookScan numbers. If you want the raw, most-consistently aggregated retailer rankings, go look for BookScan reports or Publishers Weekly summaries; for a snapshot of consumer-facing power, Amazon and Barnes & Noble will usually top the charts, with big-box retailers rounding out the highest sellers.

I tend to think about this like a map of different reporting systems that overlap. At the broadest level, Amazon sits at the center — it's the largest seller across formats, so any 'top selling' list that’s heavily online-weighted will reflect Amazon’s dominance. Parallel to that is Barnes & Noble for wide bookstore presence in physical retail. Big-box chains like Walmart and Target show high unit sales for certain genres, especially children's books and low-priced mass-market paperbacks.

If you flip to who compiles the authoritative retailer-based charts, NPD BookScan is the go-to for many professionals; 'Publishers Weekly' publishes BookScan-derived lists and breakdowns, and those will show retailer share by title. The 'New York Times Best Sellers' list is influential but uses a proprietary mix of reporting stores and isn’t identical to BookScan results. Independent stores report through ABA/IndieBound and increasingly through platforms like Bookshop.org, which can amplify indie sales in public-facing lists. Finally, don’t forget format-specific leaders: Kindle/Kindle Store for ebooks, Audible for audiobooks; those aren’t 'bookstores' in the shelf sense but they absolutely report top-selling titles in their channels. If you want precise rankings, a BookScan subscription, Publisher Weekly summaries, or Statista and company filings for the major retailers are the practical paths to get retailer-by-retailer sales figures.