The string of weeks in which unit sales of print books were down in all major categories reached three last week, leading to a 5.4% sales decline from the comparable week in 2022 at outlets that report to Circana BookScan.
The adult nonfiction segment performed the best, with units slipping just 0.9%. The category had the top-selling book in the week, with Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis selling nearly 127,000 copies in its first week on sale. Another new title, The King of Late Night by Fox News pundit Greg Gutfeld, landed in the fourth spot on the category list, selling over 17,000 copies.
The adult fiction segment had a bad week, with sales down 7.2%. The category simply cannot keep pace with last year, when Colleen Hoover titles were generating huge sales numbers. Last year at this time, Hoover had six titles on the category’s top 10 list that sold a combined 343,000 copies—including the number book, It Ends with Us, which sold about 114,000 copies. Last week, Hoover had four books in the top 10, which sold a total of about 90,000 copies. The number one seller was once again Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, which sold nearly 54,000 copies.
The juvenile fiction category was the best performer among the children’s categories, with sales down 6.3%. The bestselling new release was One of Us is Back by Karen M. McManus, which sold more than 14,000 copies, putting it in second place on the category list. Juvenile nonfiction sales were the worst for the week, down 13.6%. Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography by Wendy Loggia, stayed number one, selling more than 8,700 copies.
Sales in the young adult fiction category dropped 8.8%. A new title landed in the top spot, with The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes selling over 13,000 copies. At this time last year, the Jenny Han craze—tied to the release of The Summer I Turned Pretty Amazon Prime series—was easing, but the author still had four books on the category’s top 10 chart, selling about 66,000 copies.
