(Publisher’s Weekly, Mar. 23, by Dermot McEvoy and Michael Coffey )

Familiar voices crowd the top in fiction; in nonfiction, the fundamental rules apply—plus all things Obama

John Grisham‘s aptly titled Appeal had the most of it, as far as the novel-buying reading public went, earning the #1 slot on our hardcover fiction list last year—just enough to beat out the beloved Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, which sold 1.3 million. Our top 15 fiction titles this year look much like last year’s, with the notable absence of Khaled Hosseini, who was top dog in ’07. The prolific James Patterson racked up three in the top echelon, and Nicholas Sparks, Patricia Cornwell, Dean Koontz and David Baldacci made returns. The new kids on the block, in addition to Wroblewski, were Stephenie Meyer, seamlessly crossing over from the YA genre with The Host, and Glenn Beck, whose Christmas Sweater apparently warmed the hearts of his faithful.

In nonfiction, per usual, the top spots went to heart-string tuggers (Randy Pausch, Rick Warren), humor (Sedaris) and self-empowerment (Roizen & Oz)—but Pausch’s The Last Lecture outsold the next bestselling book 4 to 1. Of course, the power of television and celebrity was obvious: of the top 15 authors, seven have prominent regular media exposure: Warren, Bill O’Reilly, Barbara Walters, Ina Garten, Jon and Kate Gosselin, Chelsea Handler and Maria Shriver. Together the media seven sold a remarkable 4,800,000 books.

Going deeper into the nonfiction list, one must conclude that Americans are fixated on Barack Obama, cooking and money. Obama, the leader of the free world, might also be the world’s most charismatic figure. (Paris Hilton, to whom Obama was derisively compared by the McCain camp, should be so lucky.) Books by, for and against the 44th president—it hardly mattered—did very well in 2008. First were Obama’s own memoirs, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, which together sold just over 239,000 copies. The anti-Obama forces did well with Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi and The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso, which together sold just over 470,000 copies. There were also a couple of Obama photography books: The American Journey of Barack Obama by the Editors of Life Magazine and The Rise of Barack Obama by Pete Souza (now the official White House photographer). Together they sold more than 325,000 copies.

Food had a place at the table, too. The Food Network is well represented with Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Paula Deen and Ina Garten. Also prominent were Martha Stewart, Jessica Seinfeld, Phyllis Pellman Good and Trisha Yearwood.

And with the United States facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, it’s not too surprising that people turned to two of the most trusted financial advisers in America—Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman. Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover sold 252,000 copies and Orman’s Women & Money weighed in at 179,396.

As in previous years, all the calculations on the following pages are based on shipped-and-billed figures supplied by publishers for new books issued in 2007 and 2008 and reflect only 2008 domestic trade sales. Figures for all books listed below with a number symbol (#) were submitted to PW in confidence, for use only in placing titles on the lists. Numbers are rounded down to indicate their sales relationship to other titles.