I am looking for:
(1) an annual listing of top-selling books in the united states by
category: eg art, business, history, religion, science, etc.
(2) the number of books sold for each of these books

Amazon.com sends out an annual e-mail with their "annual picks"
Encyclopedia Brittanica has a "Bibliography: Recent Books" summary

What I want is literally the best-sellers by category with # sold.

The answer to your question is that this data is not available. 
Publishing companies do not release data concerning books sold. 
Please read the below article from Slate.com on why this is.

http://slate.msn.com/?id=3504


I found this article by searching Google for "bestselling books" and
visiting this page:

http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/FARQ/bestsellerFARQ.html

The link to Slate.com was in that page.  


I'm sorry I wasn't able to get the information you requested.  Thanks
for using Google Answers!

xemion-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by gantonick-ga on 24 May 2002 11:48 PDT

thank you, knowledge_seeker, for dollar sales figures. knowing that x%
comes from on-line sources.. and Amazon probably provides for half of
on-lines sales, might be able to guess at totals if Amazon publ
counts.

am still looking for 
- annual listing: eg best sellers for 2000, 2001, etc.
- by category: art, history, etc
- for US only

xemion - thanks for the slate article, and good start..

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Clarification of Answer by xemion-ga on 24 May 2002 20:22 PDT

I'm glad you liked the artice and I'm sorry I'm not able to find the
information are looking for.  I really don't think it published,
atleast not until years later.  Thanks!

xemion-ga

helpful information but did not answer question

Hi there!

I see the question has been answered, but I do have some further
information that might help you.

If you’re just interested in the total sales in each genre, but not
actual titles, the best source would Publisher’s Weekly—“the
129-year-old international news magazine of the $23 billion book
industry...”

“Publishers Weekly is the vehicle that draws the many elements of
publishing into a community. It is the prime source of comprehensive
news and provides unique industry data, including bestsellers by
multiple categories, book industry statistics, news and more than
7,500 critical book and spoken-word audio and e-book reviews annually”

The link below will take you to their FAQ’s. Choose number 19 if it
doesn’t already take you there, and it will present (in table form
which is hard to reproduce here), the following information:

ESTIMATED ANNUAL PUBLISHER SALES OF TRADE BOOKS (IN US DOLLARS) 

ESTIMATED NUMBER OF TRADE BOOKS SOLD IN UNITS (2000)

ESTIMATED ANNUAL SALES OF ADULT TRADE BOOKS BY CATEGORY IN UNITS &
PERCENT OF MARKET SHARE (2000)

ESTIMATED PERCENTAGE OF TRADE BOOK SALES BY TYPE OF OUTLET (2000)

TOTAL RETAIL SALES OF BOOKS IN BOOKSTORES

http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=siteInfo&doc_id=21658&crumb=FAQs#trade

Hope this helps 

– Knowledge_Seeker

Publishers Weekly DOES keep track of booksales by count.  If you fish
around, you might wind up with more information than you think.  For
instance, take a look at:

Bestsellers of 1999--Hardcover: So Far, Little Has Changed

at http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=articleArchive&articleId=CA168188&display=searchResults&stt=001

that has information like:  

17. Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler (Putnam, 764,769)

Searching the PW site for similar articles for other years might be
worthwhile.

Davidsar -

great site! Good hunting! Am still looking for categories.. though I
think the category's pretty obvious by the title.

Thanks.

www.bookweb.org is the website of the American Booksellers Association
and has some pretty detailed information on units sold broken down by
category, Adult Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Cooking, Religious, etc.
The cursory look I had on their site showed info up to 1998 only.

Hope this helps...