Soft Fiction Sales Result in Decline in Mid-September

With fiction sales falling in both the adult and juvenile segments, total sales of print units slipped 1% in the week ended Sept. 23, 2018, compared to the similar week in 2017, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Adult nonfiction had the strongest week, with units up 3% over the week ended Sept. 24, 2017. Fear by Bob Woodward kept its place atop the overall bestseller list, selling more than 342,000 copies in the week, but a host of new books made strong debuts. Reese Witherspoon’s Whiskey in a Teacup landed at #2 on the adult nonfiction list, with nearly 62,000 copies sold. Cravings by Chrissy Teigen was in third place, with more than 57,000 copies sold, and Sally Field’s much-anticipated memoir, In Pieces, sold more than 42,000 copies, putting it in fifth place on the list. Unit sales rose 1% over 2017 in juvenile nonfiction, helped by the release of The Atlas Obscura Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid by Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco, which sold more than 6,000 copies in its first week—good enough for second place on the category list. Adult fiction unit sales dropped 6% in the week due to overall softness among the top 100 bestsellers. In 2017, the top 100 titles sold a total of 722,000 copies; in the most recent week in 2018, that number fell 20%, to 577,000 copies. The top seller for the week ended Sept. 23 was Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling), which sold more than 33,000 copies in its first week.

Editor’s note: Sales for the week ended Sept. 23, 2018, do not include data for the Christian bookstore chain Lifeway.

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)