Top memoirs and autobiography sales statistics

• 331,844,000 non-fiction books are sold per year
• 80% are adult non-fiction, 20% juvenile or young adult non-fiction
• Over the last 5 years, Adult non-fiction revenue has grown 22.8%
• Young adult non-fiction revenues have grown 40% over the same period
• Memoirs and biographies for young adults grew 26%
• Adult non-fiction is the largest U.S. print book category totaling 41% of the total US market

Memoirs and autobiography sales statistics

• Over the last 5 years, Adult non-fiction revenue has grown 22.8%
• Young adult non-fiction revenues have grown 40% over the same period
• Memoirs and biographies for young adults grew 26%
• Memoirs and Biographies is the #1 best-selling hard copy book, non-fiction book category on Amazon
  • It comes in ahead of 
    • Self Help
    • Religion and Spirituality
    • Health, Fitness, and Dieting 
    • Politics and Social Science
• For e-books, memoirs and biographies come in second behind religion and spirituality
• Non-fiction is more popular in print format than digital

Best selling memoirs and autobiographies

Book	Author	Release date	Copies sold
An Autobiography	Agatha Christie	2012	10M+
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	1791	5M+
A Promised Land	Barack Obama	2020	5M+
Becoming	Michelle Obama	2018	4M+
Educated	Tara Westover	2018	2M+
Born a Crime Stories from a South African Childhood	Trevor Noah	2016	2M+
Love, Lucy	Lucille Ball	1997	1M+
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant	Ulysses S. Grant	2006	1M+
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster	Jon Krakauer	1997	1M+
The Autobiography of Malcolm X	Malcolm X	1987	500K+

Largest advances for memoirs or autobiographies

1. Barack and Michelle Obama for A Promised Land and becoming – $60million
2. My Life by Bill Clinton – $15 million
3. Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton – $14 million
4. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen – $10 million
5. Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II – $8.5 million
6. Life by Keith Richards – $7.3 million

• The largest advance ever for an autobiography is 4x that of the second largest
• Of the six largest advances: 3 were for politicians, 2 for rockstars and one for the head of the Catholic church
• George W Bush received $7 million for his memoirs, suggesting that publishers have more faith in Democratic politicians to sell books than their Republican counterparts
• The average reader got through less than 13 pages of Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton

Memoirs and autobiographies on the NYT bestsellers list

• Over 3 million books are published each year, less than 500 make the NYT BSL
• General fiction and biographies make the list more frequently than any other genre
• 31% of Americans say biographies is their favorite book genre
• Almost 50% of non-fiction books on the NYT BSL are biographies or memoirs
• Of 2,025 non-fiction books to have reached the NYT BSL, almost 900 were biographies or memoirs
• History, general non-fiction and reference books are 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively
• 24% of biographies and memoirs last just one week on the list
• Male authors dominate in all non-fiction categories but the gender gap is smallest in memoirs and biographies