What Australians read in 2025 – and the one book that ruled them all
Nearly 70 million books were bought, but one viral hit sat far ahead of the pack.
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Australian readers embraced the “let them” ethos in 2025, making a self-help guide to boundaries the country’s biggest-selling title of the year, while craft, recipes and genre fiction also filled book bags.
Viral pop-psychology book The Let Them Theory by American podcaster Mel Robbins finished the year well ahead of every other title, selling 373,450 copies since it was published in January, according to figures from NielsenIQ BookScan.
The rulebook for emotional restraint dominated the charts for much of 2025, spending 16 weeks as Australia’s overall number one and holding the top spot in non-fiction for most of the year. The success was mirrored globally, with the title reportedly clocking more than 8 million sales worldwide.
The top 10 highest-selling books in Australia feature (from left): Mel Robbins, Nagi Maehashi, Suzanne Collins and Jane Harper.Credit: Matt Willis
If readers were setting boundaries, they were also colouring inside them. Colouring books emerged as a surprise force in the top 10, with Vietnamese artists’ collective Coco Wyo’s Cozy Corner (no. 4) and Cozy Cuties (no. 6) selling a combined 329,220 copies. Cosy Calm by Cherry Lam added a local shade to the trend, selling more than 50,000 copies.
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The Brisbane artist said many young people were actively trying to carve out screen-free moments in their day.
“Colouring is an accessible hobby that forces us to concentrate on one thing only, it serves as a cute and cosy pastime as well as a brain exercise. It trains us to focus on choosing your own colour palette for the page and honing your fine motor skills, without much artistic experience needed,” Lam said.
Penguin Random House Australia product director Kate Hoy said the colouring books comeback looked set to continue into 2026.
“This highlights the public’s strong craving for creativity, desire to slow down and a break from the constant news cycle. The audience for colouring books has broadened too, now including not just children but also those who consider themselves ‘young at heart’,” she said.