Writing for the internet is an interesting career. It’s hard to know what’s going to go viral and what’s going to flop, even after doing this for 14 years. In fact, what makes content successful online has changed rapidly in just the last year, which is why it’s useful to take a look back and see which articles our audience has responded to the most.
Here are the ten most-viewed Book Riot posts of 2024, from literary news to recommendation lists to bookish deep dives.
#10: The 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2024 by Chris M. Arnone
December always brings some of our most popular posts of the year: year-end best books lists always get a lot of clicks. This list has only been up for a couple of weeks, but it’s already made the top 10 list. Not only is it a yearly best of list, it’s also focused on sci-fi, which is one of the genres we see get the most clicks—it out-performs many of the bigger genres in terms of readership, including romance.
#8: The 20 Best Fantasy Books of 2024 by R. Nassor
You might be noticing a trend in this list already: our readers love sci-fi and fantasy! This is another year-end best of list. This year, we posted the most genre-specific best of lists in addition to our giant Best Books of 2024 list, and that’s definitely something we’ll continue in years to come! This list hasn’t even been up for two weeks, and it’s already one of our top posts of the year.
#7: “The Girl With The Green Ribbon”: A Tale of Many Lives by Kelly Jensen
What’s interesting about this being one of our top posts of the year is that it was published in 2021! While the internet usually has a pretty short attention span, this is an evergreen essay that regularly gets rediscovered. It’s the kind of deep dive with a nostalgic subject that readers tend to respond to.
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#6: 8 Science Fiction Books that are Impossible to Adapt to the Screen by Chris M. Arnone
As mentioned earlier, sci-fi lists regularly do well for us, so it’s no surprise that another one of them made this list! They’re both written by Chris M. Arnone, one of our resident sci-fi experts. This list discusses the kind of cerebral, abstract sci-fi books that would not translate well as a movie or TV show.
#5: The Best Fantasy Series Books To Fill Your Life with Magic by Chris M. Arnone
Speaking of Chris, here’s another one of his lists, this time about fantasy series. These sort of broad “best of” lists are so difficult to write—how do you narrow down the entirety of fantasy series to just ten?—but they get a lot of attention.
#3: The Best Book Club Books for 2024 by Courtney Rodgers
This might look like another “best books of 2024” list, but it actually went up in January! (Notice that it’s the best book club books for 2024, not of 2024.) Book club content is something we’ve noticed readers seeking out a lot lately. Combine that with “new books” and an ambitious “best of” list, and you have the recipe for a widely viewed post. If you want more book club recommendations, sign up for In the Club, our book club newsletter!
#2: The Thriller Writer Outselling James Patterson and John Grisham by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Our second most-viewed post of the year is another one that was primarily a news round-up for a newsletter: this is an edition of Today in Books, our newsletter that highlights the biggest and buzziest book news of the day. In this post, Rebecca discusses Freida McFadden’s meteoric rise on the bestseller lists.
#1: Barnes and Noble has Announced its 2024 Book of the Year by Community
It feels a little strange for our top post of the year to be one just passing along bookish news, but these “Breaking in Books” bite-sized news stories are often our most popular posts. It may not be the most creatively inspired thing we posted this year, but it obviously served a purpose for readers!
Of course, this is only a tiny glimpse of the hundreds of posts, newsletters, podcasts, and more Book Riot put out in 2024, but it gives you an idea of the most popular genres and topics of the moment. The most-viewed posts tend to be the ones with the broadest topics, because they have more reach, but we’ll never stop posting niche book lists. They’re too much fun!
Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.
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