The first book originally had a 50,000 first printing, which was then bumped up twice to 200,000 copies. By February 11, 2010, The Hunger Games had sold 800,000 copies and 26 foreign editions. Rights to the novel have been sold in 38 territories, and there are over 2.9 million copies in print. The book is a USA Today and The New York Times Best Seller. It was on The New York Times list for over 100 consecutive weeks as of September 2010.
Outside of that it’s won a lot of awards, only negative criticism I’ve seen (besides being compared to Battle Royale that I never heard of til this movie came out) is
The novel has also been controversial; it ranked in fifth place on the American Library Association’s list of most banned books for 2010, the reasons being it was “sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence.”
I think that reason is bullshit, compared to Harry Potter and Twilight. The theme for HP is death, and the theme for Twilight is lame unfettered high school sexuality. But I suppose magical and fantasy deaths are not as harsh as more realistic ones.