Soft Adult Sales Lead to 2% Unit Decline in Late October

With sales down in both adult categories, unit sales of print books in the week ended Oct. 27, 2018, fell 2.2% compared to the same week in 2017, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Adult fiction had the biggest decline, with units off 5.1% compared to the week ended Oct. 28, 2017. The drop came despite solid sales at the top of the category bestseller list. John Grisham’s latest, The Reckoning, sold nearly 117,000 copies in its first week, roughly 2,000 more than Grisham’s The Rooster Bar sold in its debut week, which was last year at this time. Fiction sales in the week ended Oct. 28, 2017, also benefitted from the release of Christine Feehan’s Leopard’s Blood, which sold almost 19,000 copies in its first week, and The Black Book by James Patterson and David Ellis, which sold more than 15,000 copies in its first week. Adult nonfiction unit sales dropped 3.5% compared to 2017. Last year at this time, Ree Drummond’s The Pioneer Woman Cooks was released and sold more than 101,000 copies. In contrast, the top-selling adult nonfiction title in the most recent week was Cook Like a Pro by Ina Garten, which sold almost 67,000 copies in its first week. The young adult nonfiction segment had a 33.9% increase in sales over 2017, but that is due in large part to the misclassification of a new coloring book from Johanna Basford, World of Flowers, as a YA title. It is actually an adult title and sold more than 8,000 copies in its first week. The 12.5% increase in unit sales in young adult fiction was led by Kingdom of Ash by Sarah Maas, which sold more than 42,000 copies in its first week.

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