The Weekly Scorecard: Tracking Unit Print Sales for Week Ending October 5, 2014

October started on a good note, with unit sales of print books up 4% in the week ended Oct. 5, 2014, compared to the similar week last year, at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. Units increased 5% through the retail & club channel in week 40, while sales through the merchandise channel rose 2%. Adult fiction was the only category that had a year-over-year sales decline in the week, and the 1% drop was among its smallest in 2014 to date. The segment benefited from the strong showing of three editions of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl; two trade paperbacks (including the movie tie-in edition) and a mass market paperback edition combined to sell about 165,000 copies at outlets that report to BookScan, taking three of the top four spots on the list (Burn, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, was #2). The adult nonfiction segment had a small gain, as Killing Patton, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, continued to lead the way, selling about 114,000 units. The biggest increase, once again, was in the juvenile nonfiction segment, which was up 27%, receiving a boost from four Minecraft titles. The biggest seller in the week was Minecraft: Cartoon Handbook, with about 58,000 units sold, roughly triple the sales in week 39. Dork Diaries 8, by Rachel Renée Russell, was the new top seller in juvenile fiction, with 34,000 units sold.

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel

Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

Unit Sales of Print Books by Format

Source: Nielsen BookScan and Publishers Weekly. Nielsen BookScan’s U.S. Consumer Market Panel covers approximately 80% of the print book market and continues to grow.