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
- It comes in ahead of
- 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
- Barack and Michelle Obama for A Promised Land and becoming – $60million
- My Life by Bill Clinton – $15 million
- Hard Choices by Hilary Clinton – $14 million
- Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen – $10 million
- Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II – $8.5 million
- 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