This article is more than 2 years old.

January 5, 2018 This article is more than 2 years old.

In 2017, Indians shopping for books on Amazon.in were overwhelmingly looking for one thing: textbooks.

According to the Amazon.in Reading Trends Report 2017, the highest-selling book on the website was M Laxmikanth’s Indian Polity, an 852-page clunker designed for students attempting the highly-competitive civil services examinations. Overall, exam preparation was the most popular genre on Amazon.in, with books such as Word Power Made Easy, A Brief History of Modern India, and General Knowledge 2018 ranking high on the 2017 best-seller list.

This is perhaps not surprising, given that educational books drive India’s publishing industry, accounting for around 70% of the market, according to Nielsen. However, Indians did shop for some literature and fiction, both local and foreign, as well as self-help and romance books.

The overall best-sellers on Amazon.in include the usual suspects: Amish Tripathi, author of the Shiva trilogy, and Chetan Bhagat, whose most recent book, One Indian Girl, was a story of love and marriage from the female point of view.

And 30 years after it was first published, Indians are still reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist with gusto.

The best-selling books on Amazon.in in 2017:

Rank Title 1 Indian Polity 5th Edition by M Laxmikanth 2 Sita—Warrior of Mithila by Amish Tripathi 3 Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis 4 The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy 5 Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill 6 One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat 7 General Knowledge 2018 by Manohar Pandey 8 This Is Not Your Story by Savi Sharma 9 General Knowledge by Dr Binay Karna 10 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

In the regional language categories, self-help books were a big hit, with translations of Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne ranking high on the best-seller list. And Heera Pheri, by the crime-fiction writer Surender Mohan Pathak, was the readers’ choice among the top five best-selling Hindi books in a poll conducted by Amazon.in between Dec. 13 and Dec. 22, 2017.

In terms of sales, Amazon.in labelled Bengaluru as the “most well-read” city, ranking above Mumbai and Delhi, which topped the list last year.

The top 10 Indian cities in terms of sales:

Rank City 1 Bengaluru 2 Mumbai 3 Delhi 4 Chennai 5 Hyderabad 6 Pune 7 Kolkata 8 Gurugram 9 Noida 10 Jaipur

For readers looking for something other than textbooks and self-help, may we gently suggest the best books Quartz India read in 2017.