Navigating the iTunes Best Seller Lists

The best seller lists on iTunes and Amazon can provide great research as you’re brainstorming cover art, titles and blurbs. You can also find valuable information here about what works and doesn’t work in any given genre. But how do you get to these lists? Here is a quick guide with images to help you navigate to these lists on iTunes.

1. Open iTunes. Click on the iTunes Store in the upper right corner (circled in purple). 2. Along the top menu, now choose “Books” (circled in purple). 3. Along the right side of the store, you will see links to the Top Books. If you are interested in browsing the Top 200 of all books in the iTunes store, you can click on “Top Books” and it will take you to the full list of 200. Once you are looking at the full Top 200 Best Seller list, you can find lots of great information. Below, I have circled the category in purple. I have circled the ranking in red. At the time of this screenshot, Fifty Shades of Grey was ranked #1 in “Books” on iTunes. In blue, I have pointed out a drop-down menu where iTunes lets you look at this list in 3 views. By book Name, Bestseller Rank, and Release Date. 4. As a neat new feature, if you click on the second “books” (Books > Books) in the category list (purple above), iTunes will now take you to a 3 column list. Paid Books. Free Books. And New York Times Bestsellers. Now, if you click where it says “All Genres” on the right (I’ve marked this in purple above), you will see a drop-down box of all the different genre lists on iTunes.

5. When you click on any of these genres/categories, it will take you to a similar 3-column or 2-column view of the Top Paid and Free books in that category. I am going to click on “Romance”, which will take me to a 2 column list of “Paid” and “Free” books. Click “Paid” books and it takes me to another view of the Top 200 Paid Romance Books in the iTunes store. You can see which category you are viewing by looking at the top left where it is listed as:

 6. If you click the word “Romance”, now you will be taken to the main Romance store on iTunes. They will show you Recent Releases, What’s Hot, Coming Soon, and so on. Along the right side, you’ll see the “Top Charts”, which is basically that same “Top Romance Paid” list you just saw.

However, if you want to narrow your view of the romance categories, scroll down just below the Top Charts list and you will see a list of “More Romance””

Selecting any of these categories will now take you to the Top 200 books in that subcategory. For example, I will choose “Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost”.  This will show me all of the Top 200 books in that subcategory. (The category and subcategory are circled in purple below and are always found on the top left of the Top 200 page.)

You will see we are back to that same view that has the category listed (purple), the ranking in that category (red) and the ability to arrange by Bestsellers, Name or Release date (Blue).

7. Any time you want to get back out to the main page from a bestseller list, you can either click “Books” along the top menu again (which will take you to the main page), or you can click the back button, which will take you to the previous category.

 

This manner of navigation will work for any category and subcategory on iTunes. I hope this guide has helped you learn a little more about how to navigate on iTunes.