The arrival of Oricon’s light novel sales charts for 2012 has revealed the year belongs to Sword Art Online by a wide margin, with the series being by far the best selling of the year, and with every single SAO title in the featuring in the top 20 best sellers – leading to half the chart being comprised of SAO novels.
The top 10 best selling light novel series of 2012 – Sword Art Online leads the pack by some margin:
1. 2,764,454 – Sword Art Online
2. 1,033,906 – Accel World
3. 767,236 – Koten Seies (Hyouka)
4. 696,322 – Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei
5. 686,467 – A Certain Magical Index – A New Contract
6. 654,224 – High School DxD
7. 620,972 – Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai
8. 544,507 – Ore no Imouto
9. 450,794 – Oda Nobuna no Yabou
10. 447,053 – Papa no Iu Koto
The top 20 best selling light novels – with every single volume of Sword Art Online ranking in:
1. 368,089 – Sword Art Online 1
2. 317,124 – Sword Art Online 2
3. 304,731 – Sword Art Online 9
4. 299,319 – Sword Art Online 3
5. 286,781 – Sword Art Online 10
6. 286,031 – Sword Art Online 4
7. 256,812 – A Certain Magical Index – A New Contract 3
8. 256,003 – Hyouka (Koten)
9. 249,531 – Sword Art Online 5
10. 248,944 – Sword Art Online Progressive 1
11. 238,096 – Tomodachi ga Sukunai 8
12. 234,235 – Sword Art Online 6
13. 225,343 – Kagerou Days -in a daze-
14. 221,681 – Ore no Imouto 10
15. 213,382 – A Certain Magical Index – A New Contract 4
16. 211,803 – Sword Art Online 7
17. 206,810 – Sword Art Online 8
18. 203,672 – Baka+Test 10
19. 196,364 – Ore no Imouto 11
20. 187,129 – Gusha no End Roll (Koten)
Unsurprisingly, the influence of popular anime adaptations seems to be one of the driving forces behind strong light novel sales, with sales of top novels tending to be propelled ever higher once they receive their anime.
Millions of people spend money on twilight also.
You sure like to make articles about such an overrated anime
ahahahaa owned!
And for good reasons! I love it! (And its a huge plus since I am also a MMO fanatic besides watching anime).
I really hope there is a English version available as well at some point. As I was planning to read the novels after the current season is done.
This total domination makes a sequel more likely! I hope they do if they follow the novels and dont stray off too much.
How can you read light novels? THere’s almost no pictures in it!!!
Light novel still have illustrations here and there. Real novel – at most the cover.
Guess the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings aren’t real books then.
“How can you read light novels? THere’s almost no pictures in it!!!”
when you are writing or reading books that it contains pictures in it? what a stupid question.
that is why it is called light novel cos its pure
text. when you’re reading you read the text not the picture dumbass.
I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I got tired of waiting for the boring anime’s episodes and read the first four volumes of the LN instead.
They were mediocre at best.
Very bad plot, underdeveloped characters, one of the worst, anticlimatic endings for the first arc.
You. Shut up.
NO U.
No,me.