Solid Gains in the Juvenile Categories Help Drive Units Up

Partly due to a strong performance in the juvenile nonfiction category, unit sales of print books at outlets that report to NPD BookScan were 4% higher in the week ended June 4, 2017, than in the comparable week in 2016. Unit sales in juvenile nonfiction were 10% higher than in the week ended June 5, 2016, led by the release of Chelsea Clinton’s new book, She Persisted, which sold almost 42,000 copies in its first week. The category also benefited from students’ upcoming summer break: five Summer Bridge Activities titles were among the top 10 bestsellers in the category, selling a total of about 30,000 copies. Print unit sales in the juvenile fiction segment were 8% higher than in the similar week in 2016. The category benefitted from a spike in sales of two backlist books: Wonder by R.J. Palacio, which was in second place on the bestseller list with more than 19,000 copies, and The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, which jumped to #3 on the category list, selling more than 12,000 copies. Two new books with solid debuts helped to lift unit sales in the adult nonfiction segment by 3% from 2016: Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken was the category’s #1 seller in the week, with more than 32,000 copies sold. In third place was Theft by Finding by David Sedaris, which sold roughly 25,000 copies. Unit sales of adult fiction slipped 1% from a year ago. Although Come Sundown by Nora Roberts was #1 on the category list, selling more than 42,000 copies, last year at this time the adult fiction segment was seeing a boost from Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You, which sold in large numbers ahead of the release of the film.

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel (in thousands)

Unit Sales of Print Books by Category (in thousands)

Unit Sales of Print Books by Format (in thousands)