For the second consecutive week, unit sales of print books were down across all categories, leading to a 6.1% drop in total sales last week from the week ended July 23, 2022, at outlets that report to Circana BookScan.
It was also the second straight week in which sales fell in the adult fiction category, with comparisons to last year, when the segment was enjoying solid weekly sales, growing more difficult. In last week’s case, adult fiction sales couldn’t keep pace with the big sales numbers turned in by Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which sold more than 123,000 copies around the release of the movie based on the novel. Three Colleen Hoover titles were in the second, third, and fourth spots on the category bestseller list last year, selling a total of about 224,000 copies.
Last week, Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was number one, selling over 37,000 copies. The bestselling new release was Daniel Silva’s The Collector, which sold almost 35,000 copies.
Adult nonfiction had the smallest decline in the week, with sales falling 3.5%. In both years, Atomic Habits by James Clear was the top seller during the week, selling almost 19,000 copies in both weeks. In second place last week was Kai Bird and Marin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus, the basis for the hit film Oppenheimer, which sold over 18,000 copies.
Not much new was selling in a big way in either the juvenile or young adult segments. The top-selling new title across the four categories was Fire and Fate by Serena Valentino, which sold over 10,000 copies, putting it in sixth place on the young adult fiction bestseller chart. Sales in the segment were down 11%, as there were no books that could compete with the sales of Jenny Han’s titles a year ago, when they rode a summer-long high due to the Amazon Prime series based on her novel The Summer I Turned Pretty.
