The Hunger Games is one of the most popular dystopian YA series. It’s sold 100 million copies worldwide, been adapted into movies starring household names, and even influenced publishing overall.
And it seems like the series has more in the tank.
We’ve already written about the huge release, and how it sold more than 1.5 million English copies in its first week, and since we’re in regular conversation with data analysts over at Libby, we thought to add some of their data to the conversation.
The Libby analysts compared the checkout rates of Sunrise on the Reaping with that of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes—the 2020 Hunger Games release that came out just before Sunrise—and found that the series has only grown in popularity.
Compared to the checkout numbers for the first month after the release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, checkout numbers for Sunrise on The Reaping increased by 515%.
Meanwhile, the other books in the series—The Hunger Games, Mockingjay, and Catching Fire—have experienced anywhere from a 120% to a 166% year-over-year checkout increase.
It’s amazing that a series that was first released 17 years ago still has such a wide appeal. Though, given its dystopian premise, maybe this is not so surprising.
As Collins herself has said, “With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.’ The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
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