What are 2025's Best Based Books?

Last Call for Authors; Sign Up Today!

Today is the last day for authors to sign up for the BasedCon V Based Book Sale starting Wednesday.

As of this morning, a couple days away from kicking off the third of 2025’s four quarterly sales, we’ve helped Based Authors place 1730 Kindle Free E-books and 6160 Kindle Paid E-Books in the hands — and E-book devices — of Based Readers.

Authors, submit your books to secure a place in our rankings. Readers, get ready to vote with your purchases to help your favorite books get the recognition they deserve.

2025’s Top Ten Based Books, Year-to-Date

The leader in the 2025 overall Based Book rankings going into the sale is Ryan M. Patrick with The Martian Incident: A Science Fiction Thriller. “When a mysterious aerial drone is shot down on Mars near the American colony of Columbia, NASA accident investigator John Cameron joins a joint DOD team to recover it. But, as a sandstorm moves in to blanket the area, the Americans are attacked by an overwhelming enemy force of EU soldiers in a surprise attack.”

G.K. Chesterton takes second place with the omnibus collection of Father Brown Mysteries. John C. Wright’s marvelous story of childhood fantasy heroes having grown up and needing to recapture their youthful idealism, One Bright Star to Guide Them, is the bronze-medalist Based Book in third.

Rafael Sabatini’s genre-defining Captain Blood stands in fourth. Sabatini’s tale of a doctor wrongly accused of treason and sold into slavery, only to escape and embark on a career of piracy was inspired by the real-life career of Henry Morgan. “The deeds of Captain Blood were misunderstood, forgotten, or deliberately confused with those of less honorable men like Morgan,” insisted Sabatini, “and this confusion of identities or misreporting of history is what the book sets out to correct.” Sabatini positions his account as the truer version, rescued from obscurity and confusion, in part by referring to “certain chronicles” and unpublished records.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ collection is currently in fifth, just edging out Robert E. Howard with Conan. Military historian and former editor of Mania comics/sf/fantasy magazine Steven G. Johnson is the number seven seller with Operation Vampire (Murphy's War Book 1) .

King Solomon's Mines stands as number eight. H. Rider Haggard defined the genre of lost-world fiction with stories that blend Victorian sensibilities, ancient secrets, and thrilling adventures. Allan Quartermain, hero of King Solomon's Mines, was a direct inspiration for Indiana Jones. Which character is better? Read and find out!

Science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright appears again to close out the top ten with his newly reissued The Iron Chamber of Memory: “[a]n eerie, suspenseful, romantic fantasy in the mood of C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams” in ninth place, and his Dragon-Award-winning Somewhither is tenth.

The Top 50 Year-to-Date

Here is a list of the top fifty in the 2025 rankings, so far.

Why are the Based Book Rankings Important?

Ranking books by actual purchases rather than votes provides a more reliable measure of genuine interest, as it reflects real economic commitment and is harder to manipulate than free or anonymous voting systems. Sales data captures broader market trends, incentivizes quality through consumer willingness to pay, and offers traceable metrics that indicate lasting relevance. Amazon inherently limits voters to one purchase and therefore one vote per book. While not completely immune to manipulation (e.g., bulk buying), purchase-based rankings generally offer a higher signal-to-noise ratio than popularity contests driven by casual opinions or coordinated campaigns.

The most recent Hugo Awards for which data is available had 1647 ballots cast. Compare that to the Based Book Sale rankings for 2024 which incorporate the input of over 5000 purchases. The 2025 rankings are on track to be even more hotly contested with total sales on track to exceed 12,000 purchases. That’s on par with the total number of votes for the Dragon Awards.

How do the Rankings Work?

The numbers are generated from Amazon Affiliate links on the sale pages (from which the Based Book Sale gets a 4% royalty), and they do not include purchases outside the sale. Authors typically report sales 50% to 100% higher. Also, you have to be present to win. Books not in the sale are not eligible for Top Based Book honors. And books that appear in multiple sales have an edge over those that only appear in one sale. Nevertheless, the Based Book Rankings is a crowd-sourced list of some of the best Based Books available, crowd-selected from a list of over two hundred.

Be sure you are signed up to get the call for authors a couple of weeks in advance of each of these sales.

That’s it for now. Thanks for being part of the Based Book community.

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