Unit sales of print books fell 1.1% in the week ended December 21, 2019—the last full week before Christmas—compared to the similar week in 2018 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Units sold fell to 32.9 million, from 33.3 million, in the week ended December 22, 2018.
Unit sales in both adult categories fell compared to 2018. Adult fiction unit sales were off 3.2%, while unit sales of adult nonfiction fell 5.0%, to 13.6 million, from 14.3 million print copies a year ago.
Juvenile fiction sales rose 7.8% in the week over 2018, rising to 8.8 million copies sold. The two top sellers in the week were both in the juvenile fiction category—Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: Fetch 22 was the leading seller in the week before Christmas, selling about 180,000 copies. Wrecking Ball, the latest Wimpy Kid title from Jeff Kinney, was in second place, selling 109,000 copies. Sales in the juvenile nonfiction category were up 13.9% over the comparable week in 2018.
Rounding out the top five selling print books in the week ended December 21 were: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which sold about 69,000 print copies; The Guardians by John Grisham, which sold 65,000 copies; and Ree Drummund’s The Pioneer Woman Cooks: The New Frontier, which sold approximately 58,000 copies.
