Print Book Sales Improve, Falling Only 1.6% Last Week

A flat sales performance by the adult category and smaller declines in the children’s segments than has been typical in recent weeks resulted in a smaller decline in total unit sales of print books last week, with sales down 1.6% compared to the week ended July 9, 2022.

On the adult side, sales in the fiction category inched up 0.1%, while nonfiction sales slipped 1.6%, at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. No new titles cracked the top 10 fiction bestsellers list last week, with Colleen Hoover’s Too Late: Definitive Edition regaining the number one spot on the list, selling nearly 48,000 copies. Three other Hoover titles were on the top 10 list, selling a total of about 71,000 copies.

Two new titles helped to limit the sales decline in adult nonfiction. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a guide to the bestselling new game in the Nintendo video game series, was number one, selling more than 59,000 copies. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed was in third place, selling almost 16,000 copies.

The juvenile nonfiction segment had the largest decline with units falling 7.1%. Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography by Wendy Loggia sold about 8,500 copies, slightly higher than the top title sold last year at this time, when My First Learn-to-Write Workbook by Crystal Radke sold approximately 7,600 copies.

Juvenile fiction sales fell 2.3% last week, an improvement over recent weeks when declines were running about 5%. Two new titles helped to limit the decline. Aaron Blabey’s The Bad Guys in Let the Games Begin, the newest edition in Blabey's Bad Guys series, was number one, selling over 35,000 copies. Karen’s Haircut by Katy Farina was in the third spot, selling about 14,000 copies in its first week.

Young adult fiction sales dropped 6.4%, also an improvement over recent weeks, when comparisons were hurt by the success of Jenny Han’s Summer I Turned Pretty books. If He Had Been with Me by Laura Nowlin stayed on top, selling over 14,000 copies, while a new release, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor by Shawn M. Warner was in second place, selling just over 13,000 copies.