Unit Sales Dropped 6.5% in Mid-December

The publishing industry does not look like it is headed for a big finish to 2018. In the week ended Dec. 15, 2018, unit sales of print books fell 6.5% compared to the similar week in 2017 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The only segment to post an increase over the week ended Dec. 16, 2017, was adult nonfiction, where the 2.4% gain was driven by the still-soaring sales of Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which sold nearly 504,000 print units. In second place on the adult nonfiction bestseller list was The Point of It All by Charles Krauthammer ,which sold just under 70,000 copies. The biggest decline in the week was in the juvenile fiction segment, where units dropped 15.7% compared to 2017. The weakness was due not to a lack of popular titles but rather to softness among midlist titles. The two top books on the category list in the most recent week, The Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith and Jeff Kinney’s The Meltdown (Wimpy Kid #13), sold a combined 199,000 copies, compared to the two top sellers in the similar week last year, Kinney’s The Getaway (Wimpy Kid #12) and Wonder by R.J. Palacio, which sold a combined 195,000 copies. Unit sales of adult fiction fell 9.8% in the week compared to a year ago. John Grisham had the top seller in both years: in the week ended Dec. 15, 2018, his The Reckoning sold about 53,000 copies, compared to 68,000 copies of The Rooster Bar at the similar time last year. In general, though, the decline seems to have more to do with how midlist titles are selling, not with bestsellers.

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