AbeBooks analysed sales information from 2000 - 2015 and found The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey topped the list ahead of numerous critically acclaimed examples of classic literature.
Covey's book, which offers advice on business and personal development, is a cornerstone of the modern self-help movement and beat To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby into second and third places respectively. Classic fiction and self-help are the list's two dominant themes. A dozen self help titles - from Who Moved My Cheese? to The Five Love Languages - appear on the list along with many classic and popular novels.
Covey, who died in 2012 from complications suffered in a bicycle accident, builds confidence in the reader through seven easy-to-use habits. Even though self-help is largely ignored by the mainstream media and never reviewed by literary critics, Covey's influence has spread far and wide - Bill Clinton met with him in 1994 in order to incorporate the habits into this presidency, and, in 1996, Time magazine named him one of the top 25 most influential Americans.
Bestselling used books from 2000 - 2015
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
5. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
6. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
8. Night by Elie Wiesel
9. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
11. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
12. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
13. Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook
14. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
15. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
16. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
19. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
20. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
21. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
22. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
23. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
24. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
26. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
27. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
28. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
29. Who Moved my Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
30. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
31. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
32. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
33. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
34. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
35. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by by Barbara Ehrenreich
36. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
37. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
38. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
39. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
40. Beloved by Toni Morrison
41. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
42. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
45. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
46. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
47. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
48. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
49. Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
50. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
51. Animal Farm by George Orwell
52. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
53. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
54. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
55. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
56. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
57. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
58. The Best American Short Stories Series
59. The Giver by Lois Lowry
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
61. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't by Jim Collins
62. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
63. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
64. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson
65. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
66. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
67. Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind by Joyce Meyer
68. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
69. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
70. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
71. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
72. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
73. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
74. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
75. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
76. The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore
77. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
78. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
79. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
80. Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries by Naomi Wolf
81. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
82. Ulysses by James Joyce
83. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
84. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
85. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
86. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
87. Love in the Times of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
88. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
89. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
90. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
91. The Stranger by Albert Camus
92. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
93.The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
94. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
95. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
96. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
97. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
98. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
99. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
100. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
