A 12.2% increase in sales in the adult fiction category was enough to lift unit sales of print books by 0.6% last week over the week ended February 26, 2022, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
The increase in adult fiction sales was driven by solid performances by a number of new titles. Lucy Score’s Things We Hide From the Light led the bump, selling nearly 64,000 copies, which put it in first place on the category bestseller list. The Adventure Zone by Clint McElroy was in sixth place on the list, selling about 20,000 copies in its first week. In between the Score and McElroy books were four Colleen Hoover titles, which sold a combined total of about 125,000 copies.
Adult fiction was the only category to have a sales increase over last year, but for the second week in a row, the decline in sales in the adult nonfiction segment was a small one, with units down 1.9%. Three new releases helped to limit the decline, topped by Young Forever by Mark Hyman, which sold more than 38,000 copies, putting it in the category’s top spot. Beth Moore’s memoir All My Knotted-Up Life was in fourth place, selling over 14,000 copies, and Two Week’s Notice by Amy Porterfield was in sixth place, selling just under 12,000 copies.
Sales fell 4% in juvenile fiction, though two new titles made the category’s top 10 list. Investigators by John Patrick Green just edged out Daddy Hugs for seventh place on the category list, with both selling over 12,000 copies.
