The Duke of Sussex’s memoir was the best-selling book on Amazon this year, but not the most read.

Spare, which included explosive allegations about the Royal family and details about their private lives, was published at the beginning of the year.

It has now taken the top spot on Amazon Books’ best-selling titles of 2023, beating Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, and books by Colleen Hoover, the popular young adult fiction author of This Ends With Us.

It follows a publicity blitz that resulted in the book selling a record 1.4 million copies across the UK, US and Canada on its first day of publication in early January.

However, the Duke’s memoir was only ranked number six on Amazon’s separate most read list, which is measured by the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners.

In this category, Spare was beaten by five Harry Potter novels, with Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix in the top spot.

The two UK-based lists, published by Amazon on Tuesday, come after the 416-page memoir was labelled the most traded-in biography of the year by We Buy Books.

According to the books specialist, which “turns unwanted books into cash”, Spare was accepted 459 times. A spokesman said: “We limit how many we accept in a timeframe so chances are if we’d accepted every copy, there’d have been a lot more!”

Spare, which detailed the Duke of Sussex’s military career, his fractured relationship with his family, and his grief over the death of his mother, was published on January 10.

The book came out in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into 15 languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates himself.

Britney Spears, Cookbooks and Matthew Perry

On Amazon’s best-selling list, it beat cookbooks for air fryers and slow cookers as well as the novel Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, which has now been turned into a major television show on Apple TV starring Oscar-winner Brie Larson.

Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book and Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Air Fryer Book, both by Nathan Anthony, took second and third place on the list, respectively.

Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman In Me, which details her years-long conservatorship, ranks at ninth place, while Matthew Perry’s book Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing is at 20.

The Friends star, who died in October, used his memoir to outline his lengthy substance abuse issues and the work he had done to help others in a similar situation.

Meanwhile, the list of Amazon’s top 20 most read books in the UK is dominated by seven Harry Potter novels in total as well as two of Rowling’s books under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

The Amazon most sold list ranks books according to the number of copies sold and pre-ordered in print and ebook, while the most read list ranks titles by the average number of daily Kindle readers and Audible listeners.

The e-commerce giant has also named its own best books of the year shortlist, curated by its editorial team, which is topped by Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang. The novel is about a struggling author who passes off her Chinese-American friend’s work as her own after her death.