14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon, the largest bookseller in the world is in the best position to know which were the most popular books of the year and, thankfully, it decided to share that knowledge with us.
If you've been even moderately connected to popular culture this year, which is rather unavoidable, there won't be many big surprises in the top 10.
In fact, if you haven't been able to guess which was the year's best-selling book, consider yourself very lucky. Also consider sharing your secret with the rest of us.
Obviously, "Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy" was this year's most sought-after book, though it's going to be a challenge to find one person who'll admit to buying it.
The trilogy that aims to do more damage to the women rights progress we've made in the past few decades than the Twilight "saga," also comes in at number three, this time as a pack.
It gets better, at number four we find "Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel" a Fifty Shades clone as it turns out. Granted, a clone that's better written than the original, but that's hardly saying anything.
At number seven in the year's best-selling books list is "Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel" the second book in the trilogy, which has only been out for a couple of months.
"This was truly the year of the billionaire bad boy in romance—Amazon readers just couldn’t get enough of the genre," Sara Nelson, editorial director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com, said. "Romance" is one way of calling it, sure.
"It’s also interesting to note that four of the five contemporary romance titles in the top 10 list, including the Fifty Shades trilogy, were originally independently published and went on to become huge best sellers," she added, not missing the opportunity to prop up Amazon's self-publishing "business."
In the end, Amazon promised that it was going to get more people to read more books than ever. It never said they were going to be good books.