Unit sales of print books fell 6.1% last week compared to the week ended June 3, 2022, at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. The decline was one of the biggest this year, as even the adult fiction category saw sales fall.
The only category to post an increase was young adult fiction, where sales inched up 0.9%. The category benefitted from two new titles that sold well in their first week. Cherish by Tracy Wolff was number one in the segment, selling more than 27,000 copies. In fourth place was Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko, which sold over 7,000 copies.
Adult fiction sales fell 1.6% from 2022. Emily Henry’s Happy Place returned to the top spot in the category, selling just over 32,000 copies. Last year at this time, John Grisham’s Sparring Partners was number one, selling more than 58,000 copies in its first week. The best-performing new title last week was the sixth volume in the Heaven Official’s Blessing series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, which sold more than 15,000 copies, good enough for 11th place on the category chart.
The top-selling new book in adult nonfiction, which had a 7.1% decline, was Culture Shock by Jim Clifton, which sold over 10,000 copies, putting it in the sixth place on the category chart.
The juvenile segments had significant declines last week, with nonfiction falling 14.1% and fiction down 8.3%. A year ago, three titles in the My Big Wipe Clean series sold a total of about 60,000 copies in their first week on sale. Last week, the three top titles in nonfiction sold about 40,000 copies, led by Wendy Loggia’s Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography, followed by two Summer Activity books. The decline in fiction came despite a new release, FGTeeV: Out of Time selling over 12,000 copies, landing it in fifth place on the category chart.
