Another strong performance by adult fiction was not enough to prevent unit sales of print books from falling 1.2% last week compared to the week ended September 12, 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
Three new releases helped to drive up sales of adult fiction 20.9% last week. Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where are You was #1 on the category bestseller list, selling nearly 40,000 copies. Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia, Volume 29 and Forgotten in Death by J.D. Robb both sold more than 28,000 copies last week. My Hero Academia led a number of solid-selling graphic novels; sales of the format were up 107% last week.
Adult nonfiction had three new books with decent debut sales, but they couldn’t compete with last year’s slate of new nonfiction titles. At this time last year, Michael Cohen’s Disloyal was #1 in the category, selling about 163,000 copies; in second place was a non-Trump title, Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty, which sold nearly 67,000 copies. Last week, American Marxism by Mark Levine stayed #1 in the category, selling over 34,000 copies. David Rubenstein’s The American Experiment was #2, selling almost 15,000 copies, while Bobby Hall’s This Bright Future and Countdown Bin Laden by Chris Wallace both sold more than 14,000 copies in their first week on sale.
Young adult fiction had a good week, with sales up 13.6%. The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes was at #1, selling over 19,000 copies in its first week on sale. Two other new titles had good debuts: Liz Braswell’s What Was Once Mine sold over 10,000 copies, and Sharon Cameron’s The Light in Hidden Places sold nearly 8,000 copies.
Juvenile fiction sales slipped 0.4% compared to a year ago, when Dav Pilkey's Dog Man: Grime and Punishment sold over 126,000 copies. Ann Martin’s new graphic novel, Kristy and the Snobs, was #1 last week, selling more than 20,000 copies. Juvenile nonfiction sales declined 12.2% in the week as sales in its largest subcategory, education/reference/language, tumbled 30.4%.
