After several weeks of declines, unit sales of print books rose 2.2% last week, compared to the week ended October 31, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
The big driver of sales was juvenile fiction, where units increased 7.7% last week. Marvel Storybook Collection, released in September, had a huge jump in sales over the previous week, selling more than 33,000 copies. Several backlist titles also had solid gains last week, including Bedtime Favorites (3rd Edition), which sold nearly 39,000 copies, and two Disney titles: Disney Animals Storybook Collection and Disney Princess Storybook Collection (4th Edition), which each sold more than 20,000 copies.
The young adult fiction category had a 10.4% sales increase last week. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had a good sales boost, with units jumping 57% to more than 8,000 copies sold, putting it in second place on the category bestseller list. Five Total Strangers debuted in fifth place on the same list, selling almost 4,000 copies.
Juvenile nonfiction was the only other category to have a sales increase last week, with units increasing 1.2%. The holidays/festivals/religion had the largest increase, 16.2%, no doubt led by sales of Halloween books. Both adult categories, as well as the young adult nonfiction category, all had sales declines of less than 1% last week.
For one of the rare times in recent months, unit sales declines compared to 2019 fell last week. Sales were down 4.6% compared to the week ended November 9, 2019. Last year at this time, Jeff Kinney’s Wrecking Ball (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #14) was released, selling more than 218,000 copies, and Triggered by Donald Trump, Jr. sold nearly 70,000 copies in its first week on sale.
