News & Opinion

800-CEO-READ's Bestselling Books of 2018

Dylan Schleicher

January 08, 2019

Taking a look back at our bestsellers in 2018 has once again put me in a reflective state of mind.

I'm not sure why looking at the yearly bestseller list always makes me reflective about our business and its place in the world, but it does. Looking back on the books we literally shipped the biggest quantities of into the world over the course of a year, I feel grateful for the authors and publishers (and everyone else who helped in their creation) we worked with, and hopeful that these books have a positive impact on people's lives and work.

I almost always think of the quote from David Schwartz, our former owner, and the father of our current owner and CEO, at this time. He spoke of how "The true profit in bookselling is the social profit; the bottom line, the measure of the impact of the books on the community."

I also think of 800-CEO-READ founder Jack Covert who, upon his retirement in 2014, told us the thing he was most proud of in his career was being able to give everyone here a job they could make a living by. Many of us have worked here for over a decade (some on or over the cusp of two decades) and Jack saw many of us buy and move into our first homes, start families, and try to find a foothold financially. That is also a social profit, an impact on the community. And as so many of the books on our awards longlist this year look at the changing nature of work, it makes me reflect on and appreciate that part of our history. It also reminds me that Jack was able to do that by forming relationships and trust with authors and others in the publishing community, helping those who bring books into the world deliver them when and where they need to be. Continuing to build that connective tissue within the industry is the only reason we're able to do the work we do—until this day.

And finally, I think of the present moment, and of the importance of books to help us make sense of it all. As our current CEO, Rebecca Schwartz, wrote recently of her personal reading experience and of the importance of getting away from the quick hits of the news cycle and social media, and into a good book, "Rejecting the immediate for the immersive is, in fact, a better way to gain an understanding of our current moment, to gain perspective and make meaning of it all. For in the act of giving over to someone else’s story, be it through literature or nonfiction, we can focus less on the latest outrage and more on the humanity between the covers in our hands."

So, as we get further into the already-heady days of 2019, we want to pause to look back at
800-CEO-READ's Bestselling Books of 2018.

Thank you to everyone who helped bring them into existence, brought them to our awareness, and worked with us to deliver them into the hands of readers.