NEW SERIES: 15 Years of the NYT Combined Fiction Best Sellers List (2011-2025)

Which books have spent the most weeks on The New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Sellers list since it was introduced 15 years ago?

I’m excited to introduce a new series that highlights findings from my analysis of 15 years of data from the The New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Sellers (2011-2025).

The New York Times introduced the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Sellers list in February 2011 as part of a revamp to its bestseller lists. The changes were a response to the increasing popularity of ebooks and the need to reflect their sales in the rankings.

I’ve compiled all the data from the list back to February 2011—that’s 773 lists and 11,595 rows of data in total (each list has 15 books)!!

I’m working my way through manually coding related data like genre, year published, publishing house, etc., and will be sharing my findings in this new series. (I’m trying to think of an acronym or abbreviation for it… NYTCF15??? 😂)

To kick things off, I’m sharing the 10 books that have spent the most weeks on the list.

Some posts in the series will be free, but you’ll need to become a paid subscriber to access all the findings (only US$5/month or US$50/year).

→ See all Best Sellers Analysis posts

Data Source

List: The New York Times Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Sellers

Sales Period: 2011 to 2025 (November 30, 2025 list, to be exact)

Methodology: I analyzed the data to determine which books have spent the most weeks on the list over the last 15 years.

Most Weeks on the List

As of the November 30, 2025 list

1. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018) - 193 weeks

2. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (2016) - 146 weeks

3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012) - 122 weeks

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017) - 115 weeks

5. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (2022) - 105 weeks

6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015) - 102 weeks

7. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (2023) - 101 weeks

8. Verity by Colleen Hoover (2018) - 96 weeks

9. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014) - 91 weeks

10. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015) - 88 weeks

---

Analysis

Genre

• Fiction: 40%

• Mystery & Thriller: 40%

• Romance & Romantasy: 20%

Publisher

• Big Five: 80%

  • Penguin Random House: 30%

  • Simon & Schuster: 30%

  • Hachette: 10%

  • Macmillan: 10%

• Other Traditional: 20%

  • Entangled: 10%

  • Sourcebooks: 10%

Timing

Three books didn’t appear on the Combined Fiction Best Sellers list in the same year they were published:

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - published in 2017, didn’t appear on the list until 2021.

• Verity by Colleen Hoover - published in 2018, didn’t appear on the list until 2021.

• The Housemaid by Freida McFadden - published in 2022, didn’t appear on the list until 2023.

Also, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover appeared on the list for one week when it was published in 2016, but didn’t appear again until 2021.

Adaptations

All of the books have been adapted for the screen or are in development:

Released

5 of the books have been adapted for the screen and released (4 movies, 1 TV series).

• Gone Girl (2014)

• The Girl on the Train (2016)

• Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

• All the Light We Cannot See (2023)

• It Ends With Us (2024)

Coming Soon

2 of the books have been adapted into movies that are set to be released soon.

• The Housemaid (2025)

• Verity (2026)

In Development

3 of the books are in development to be adapted for the screen (2 movies, 1 TV series).

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

• The Nightingale

• Fourth Wing

Stay tuned for more from the NYTCF15 series! Next up…which authors have had the most books on the list?

How many of the top 10 have you read?