An early 2021 Easter, combined with declining sales last spring as the pandemic heated up, resulted in a huge gain in unit sales of print books for the week ended March 28, 2021, over the comparable week last year at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Units jumped 60.8% over the week ended March 27, 2020. (Because of technical issues, NPD BookScan data was not available until Saturday last week).
Looked at another way, print unit sales increased 6.4% over the previous week in 2021, as customers began buying books for Easter, which was April 4 this year, a week earlier than 2020. Through March 28, 2021, unit sales of print books were up 26.5% over the comparable period in 2020 at outlets that report to BookScan.
For the second week in a row, sales of juvenile nonfiction fell, falling 9.1% compared to the similar week in 2020. All other major categories, however, posted healthy gains, with the smallest increase, 47.7%, coming in the young adult nonfiction category.
Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: Mothering Heights was the week’s biggest seller, selling nearly 236,000 copies. Marilyn Sadler’s It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny was in second place on the bestseller list, selling almost 45,000 copies. Nine of the week’s top 10 bestsellers were children’s books, which includes graduation gift favorite Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. The only adult title to crack the top 10 was The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy.
New releases had a tough time making the overall bestseller for the week ended March 28. Vibrant by Stacie Stephenson was the second highest-selling new release last week, selling just over 17,000 copies, putting it in 21st place on the list.
