Attack of the Best Lists 2024: Barnes & Noble

This post is part of my year end "Attack of the Best Lists" coverage. To see every post in my "Attack of the Best Lists 2024" coverage [and more backlist best of the year options] you can click here.

Barnes & Noble has released their Best Books 2024 portal making them the first major outlet to release their list and they are covering a lot of bases with many categories including books in Spanish.

And this also marks the beginning of my Attack of the Best Lists for 2024.

Of course B&N has more than one best list. The more the merrier in their eyes because ultimately they want to sell as many books as possible. And at the holidays (which the graphics clearly imply-- example image on the left), they want it to be as easy as possible to help you find the right books for your people.

While getting the most sales is the reason, it is nice to see the categories themselves and the books found within as more inclusive than previous years. They have categories for Best Audiobooks, Best Spanish Books for adults and kids, and have celebrity memoirs and general memoirs as separate categories. They are thinking about how people read and making sure they see a category that works for them or their friends and family.

Speaking of the ease at which the average reader can access enticing titles, keep a list of those B&N categories to use as display titles and conversation starters anytime of year.

You can make a display anytime of year with these categories as well especially if you use the backlist of best lists . So while at the end of a year you can use these categories as a way to ask patrons to weigh in on their best reads of the last year, you can also use these categories and the backlist "Best" options  to make genre or reading category displays anytime of year. 

Ask you patrons to help by using  this link to see how to turn a conversation starter into a display. 

Access the backlist of Best titles through with my attack of the best lists coverage from year to year to have all the best lists, from any of the past years, all in one. But specifically, here is the B&N Best Books portal from, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020.

Look for more "Attack of the Best Lists" post coming soon.