Unit sales of print books fell 2% in the week ended Dec. 18, 2021, from the comparable week in 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The adult fiction category had the best week, with sales rising 14.2% over the week ended Dec. 19, 2020. Familiar names topped the category bestseller list, led by John Grisham’s The Judge’s List, which sold just over 47,000 copies. The Wish by Nicholas Sparks was in second place, followed by The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy and Mitch Albom’s The Stranger in the Lifeboat, all of which sold over 38,000 copies. The juvenile fiction category had a 1.5% increase and had the two most popular titles. Jeff Kinney’s The Big Shot, the 16th book in his Wimpy Kid series, was #1, selling more than 93,000 copies, followed by Perspectives, the newest volume in Dav Pilkey’s Cat Kid Comic Club series, which sold over 91,000 copies. They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera continued to lead the young adult fiction category, where sales rose 9.9%, with units topping 18,000 copies, followed by Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, which sold more than 15,000 copies. Adult nonfiction sales fell 6.9%. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land sold nearly 328,000 copies in the week ended Dec. 19, 2020, easily beating the sales of Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, which sold about 71,000 and was #1 for the week ended Dec. 18, 2021.
Due to holiday changes to publication and printer schedules, sales in today’s Scorecard are for the week ended December 18. Our January 10 issue will have figures for all of 2021.
