The 2010s in Prose and Poetry: The Books That Defined a Decade

The 2010s in Prose & Poetry: What We Read, Why It Sold, and What It Said About Us (2010–2019)

This decade snapshot brings together the best-selling prose (fiction) and poetry of 2010–2019 (first-published within those years) and reads them against the cultural weather of the 2010s. Rankings lean on the strongest public U.S. print sales and clearly note where numbers are global or qualitative. Then we ask: what did these hits reveal about how people felt, feared, healed, and hoped during a restless, hyper-connected decade?

Top 10 Prose (Fiction) — 2010–2019 (U.S. print; best public data)

1. E. L. James — Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) — bestselling book of the decade, ~15.2M U.S. copies (BookScan). 
2. E. L. James — Fifty Shades Darker (2011) — decade top-10 with multi-million U.S. sales (BookScan).
3. E. L. James — Fifty Shades Freed (2012) — decade top-10 with multi-million U.S. sales (BookScan). 
4. Paula Hawkins — The Girl on the Train (2015) — decade top-10 thriller (BookScan).
5. Gillian Flynn — Gone Girl (2012) — decade top-10 thriller (BookScan). 
6. Delia Owens — Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) — #1 U.S. print book of 2019; >1.8M that year.
7. Anthony Doerr — All the Light We Cannot See (2014) — sustained multi-million NA sales into early 2020s (contextual indicator of strong 2010s U.S. print). 
8. John Green — The Fault in Our Stars (2012) — enormous crossover YA/adult phenomenon (global multi-million; strong U.S. component).
9. Andy Weir — The Martian (2014, Crown) — breakout science-and-survival hit; long NYT run; strong U.S. print backlist.
10. Fredrik Backman — A Man Called Ove (2014 U.S.) — sleeper backlist juggernaut; multi-million global; heavy U.S. bookstore/library presence.

Note: #1–#5 are directly anchored by BookScan decade reporting; #6–#10 are best-evidence placements based on BookScan year-end lists, publisher/trade reporting, and sustained U.S. sell-through (where exact U.S. decade totals are not fully public).

Top 10 Poetry — 2010–2019 (commercial impact; best public data)

1. Rupi Kaur — milk and honey (2014) — 6M+ copies worldwide; era-defining poetry bestseller.
2. Rupi Kaur — the sun and her flowers (2017) — blockbuster follow-up; cemented the “Instapoetry” wave. 
3. Atticus — Love Her Wild (2017) — NYT-bestselling pop-lyric poetry; huge retail velocity.
4. Courtney Peppernell — Pillow Thoughts (2016) — series passed 1M+ globally; social-first readership.
5. Amanda Lovelace — the princess saves herself in this one (2016) — major Instapoetry series; strong U.S. reception.
6. Atticus — The Dark Between Stars (2018) — second big NYT hit.
7. Nayyirah Waheed — salt. (2013) — influential indie phenomenon; platform-driven discovery. 
8. R.H. Sin — Whiskey, Words, & a Shovel (2015) — large pop-poetry audience; chain-store mainstay. 
9. Claudia Rankine — Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) — prize-winning, NYT-bestselling literary poetry; wide classroom adoption.
10. Ocean Vuong — Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) — critically lauded breakout; strong U.S. literary readership.

Note: Poetry lacks a single public decade-wide U.S. unit ledger like fiction. We anchor placements where publisher numbers exist (e.g., Kaur) and otherwise rely on trade signals (NYT lists, chain sell-through, awards), which we label as best-evidence.

What the 2010s Felt Like — and Why These Books Hit

The 2010s were defined by the smartphone/social graph, polarized politics, movements for racial and gender justice, and a turn toward therapeutic language and self-disclosure. U.S. smartphone adoption leapt from ~35% in 2011 to ~77% by 2016 and over 90% by 2024, reshaping attention, identity, and how art circulated. The “feed” became the new commons, the DM a confessional booth, and the screenshot a kind of text. 

Escapism & power dynamics: The explosive sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy suggest a mass appetite for intimate fantasy in an era of surveillance capitalism and performative online identity. Its critics debated consent and gendered power; its sales proved how erotic romance, marketed virally, could dominate a decade.

Suspicion, memory, and the unreliable self: Breakout thrillers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train turned the unreliable narrator into a cultural mirror: truth feels contested, stories are weaponized, and domestic spaces hold menace.

Ecology, solitude, and invisibility: Where the Crawdads Sing fused a fragile coastal ecosystem with social abandonment. Its 2019 sales crown reflects both book-club energy and an ecological longing: nature as refuge and judge.

Human connection across divides: Works like All the Light We Cannot See emphasized cross-cut empathy and the moral ambiguities of war, resonating as globalization and polarization strained social bonds.

Illness, survival, and ordinary grace: The Fault in Our Stars, The Martian, and A Man Called Ove each model resilience—through love, ingenuity, or neighborliness—meeting readers where private grief met public anxiety.

Poetry in the Age of the Feed

The 2010s saw poetry re-enter the mainstream via Instagram. Short lines, white space, hand-drawn miniatures, and direct address matched the scroll. Instapoetry’s critics charged simplicity; its advocates prized access and care. Academic reviews and theses now treat it as a platformized literary form—an art shaped by the interface itself.

Why it resonated: Millions found in Rupi Kaur and peers a compact language for trauma, recovery, identity, and everyday bravery—poems as emotional first aid, easy to save and share. The sales story (6M+ for milk and honey) proves that intimacy—when coupled to network effects—can become a mass art.

Art vs. metrics: The decade asked whether virality flattens metaphor—or simply democratizes it. Either way, the 2010s taught poetry to speak in the language of the timeline, and the timeline to expect poetry that speaks back.

What These Books Say About the 2010s (in one breath)

Across both lists, the decade turned vulnerability into a public aesthetic; blurred private and public personae; made place and ecology central to belonging; and asked literature to heal, thrill, and companion readers through uncertainty. If the 1990s prized irony and the 2000s prized spectacle, the 2010s prized confession with consequence—the personal as a credible lens on the political, and vice versa.

Sources

• Publishers Weekly on BookScan’s 2010s decade list; Fifty Shades at 15.2M U.S. copies.(https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/82019-bookscan-reports-fifty-shades-of-grey-is-bestselling-book-of-the-decade.html)
• Publishers Weekly year-end 2019: Where the Crawdads Sing #1 print book; >1.8M units (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/82190-breaking-down-the-bestsellers-of-2019.html)
• Andrews McMeel (publisher) and People on milk and honey 6M+ global sales. (https://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/rupi-kaur-and-andrews-mcmeel-publishing-announce-the-release-of-a-10th-anniversary-collectors-edition-of-milk-and-honey/)
• Academic/critical work on Instapoetry as a platformized form. (https://www.rit.edu/croatia/sites/rit.edu.croatia/files/docs/2023_Charry_Roje_Vojnovi%C4%87-Instapoetry_FINAL.pdf)
• Pew Research on smartphone adoption growth in the 2010s (context for attention/platform effects). (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/01/12/evolution-of-technology/)