Amazon China Rankings reveal readers' favorites in mid-2017

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Amazon China, one of the country's leading online booksellers, has published several rankings which shine a light on Chinese bookworms' favorite reads in the first half of 2017.

Paperback versus e-book

Japanese author Keigo Higashino's "Miracles of the Namiya General Store" topped the list of the most popular paperbacks, followed by late Chinese writer Yang Jiang's "We Three".

Israeli historian Yuval Noah's "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" came in at third place..

Chinese readers also showed a particular appetite for social science books in the paperback category.

Three out of the top 10 bestsellers were related to this field, including "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah and "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World" by Peter Frankopan.

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However, on the rankings of e-books for Amazon's signature Kindle, it's novels that seem to be the more popular choice, accounting for 7 spots in the top 10.

Chinese writer Zhou Meisen's "In the Name of the People" is top of the charts, followed by Keigo Higashino's "Miracles of the Namiya General Store" and then "Fall of Giants", book one in British author Ken Follett's historical century trilogy.

The sales of "In the Name of the People" were given a significant boost thanks to a recent TV adaptation. Three months after the anti-graft show hit screens, the book's sales increased 12-fold in paperback and 24-fold on Kindle, Amazon China said.

Other popular novels in the Top 10 include the "Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin (No. 4), "Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle (No. 5), and "The Devotion of Suspect X" by Keigo Higashino (No. 9).

The rankings showed some parallels with JD.com, another major player in online book-selling in China, who released similar rankings in early July.

According to the site, "Miracles of the Namiya General Store" came in at second place in the paperback chart, while Yuval Noah's two works and "In the Name of the People" also all made to the Top 10.

Hefei citizens love reading most

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For the fourth consecutive year, Amazon released a ranking of Chinese cities where people read the most.

The central cities of Hefei and Zhengzhou took the first and second spots respectively for the second consecutive year.

Changchun in northeastern Jilin Province climbed six spots to No. 3.

The ranking was based on the ratio of book sales compared to the volume of all other products sold on Amazon during the first six months of the year.