With only the adult fiction segment posting an increase, unit sales of print books fell 12.2% last week compared to the week ended December 12, 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
Sales in adult nonfiction dropped 15.4% from this time last year, when copies of Barack Obama’s A Promised Land continued to sell in large quantities; more than 325,000 copies were sold in the comparable period from a year ago. The #1 adult nonfiction title last week was Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry: Poems, which sold almost 175,000 copies in its first week on sale. In second place was Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, which sold almost 95,000 copies, followed by The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., which had sales of more than 60,000 copies. In fourth place was Kayleigh McEnany’s For Such a Time As This, which sold nearly 45,000 copies in its first week on sale.
Juvenile fiction sales fell 10.3% last week. Dav Pilkey had the top selling title both last week and a year ago with his Cat Kid Comic Club titles, though this year’s volume, Perspectives, sold about 93,000 copies, compared to the 101,000 copies the first volume sold a year ago.
The adult fiction segment managed to eke out a 2.5% increase in the week. John Grisham’s The Judge’s List was #1 in the category, selling more than 39,000 copies. The top-selling new release was Chainsaw Man, Volume 8 by Tatsuki Fujimoto, which sold almost 29,000 copies, putting it in eighth place on the category list.
Juvenile nonfiction sales took a 19.7% hit last week as sales of the top-selling category titles were down considerably from a year ago. In the week ended December 12, 2020, Try Not to Laugh Challenge by Crazy Corey and The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook by Dinah Bucholz were in first and second place, selling 29,000 and 28,000 copies, respectively. Last week, How to Draw 101 Animals by Dan Green was #1, selling nearly 19,000 copies, followed by My First 100 Words by Roger Priddy, which sold just over 16,000 copies.
