Amazon.com Announces 1997 Bestseller List

Posted on January 14, 1998

Amazon.com announced its 40 best-selling books for 1997. Capturing the diversity of Amazon.com's than one million unique customers, the 1997 bestseller list includes a broad range of titles, from national bestsellers to lesser-known special interest books.

Bestsellers for 1997: 1. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster Jon Krakauer 2. Cold Mountain Charles Frazier 3. The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea Sebastian Junger 4. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir Frank McCourt 5. Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of Third-Generation Site Design David S. Siegel 6. Songs in Ordinary Time Mary McGarry Morris 7. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative Edward R. Tufte 8. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Edward R. Tufte 9. Stones from the River Ursula Hegi 10. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy

Looking at the 1997 bestseller list, Amazon.com senior vice president David Risher noted significant changes in book buying at Amazon.com during the past year. "Our top-selling title in 1996 was David S. Siegel's Creating Killer Web Sites. In 1997, our number-one bestseller was Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, an anguishing personal account of an ill-fated Mount Everest expedition. I can think of no better illustration of the changes in Internet shopping over the past year. With our catalog of 2.5 million titles and thousands of expert reviews, author interviews, and customer comments, Amazon.com is thrilled to have introduced more than a million customers to books they love."