Juvenile Categories Post Double Digits Unit Gains

In the week ended Feb. 25, 2018, unit sales of print books were 3% higher than in the comparable period in 2017 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The two juvenile categories once again led the sales increase. Penguin Random House’s annual Dr. Seuss promotional push helped to drive print sales up 12% in juvenile fiction over the week ended Feb. 26, 2017. Five Seuss titles appeared in the top 10 bestsellers in the category, selling a total of about 106,000 copies. The #1 title, however, was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which sold nearly 36,000 copies. Print unit sales were 10% higher in the week in the juvenile nonfiction category. Backlist titles by Tish Rabe had a good week; Rabe’s There’s No Place like Space was the top title in the segment, selling more than 15,000 copies, and her If I Ran the Dog Show came in at #10, selling more than 4,000 copies. Bonnie Worth also had two titles in the top 10. Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur was #2, selling more than 13,000 copies, and Hark! A Shark! was #5, selling more than 5,000 copies. Adult nonfiction print unit sales rose 1% in the week. Obama: An Intimate Portrait by Pete Souza jumped up to third place on the category list, selling more than 15,000 copies. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover sold nearly 13,000 copies in its first week, landing in sixth place on the category list. Print unit sales in the adult fiction segment fell 5%. There was no big new book released in the week, and Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone stayed #1, selling more than 23,000 copies. Overall, sales of the top 100 fiction bestsellers fell 9% compared to 2017.

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)