With Fantasy on Fire, Print Book Sales Are Catching Up to 2023

Spurred by huge gains in the adult fantasy genre, unit sales of print books rose 1.1% in the second quarter of 2024 over the comparable period in 2023 at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. The second quarter increase was nearly enough to offset the 1.7% decline in the first quarter, putting unit sales down only 0.4% in the first half of the year. The slow improvement in print unit sales to date this year offers the industry at least some hope that a two-year slide in sales might come to an end this year.

Results for the first half of 2024 leave no question about what is driving sales: adult fantasy sales skyrocketed 85.2% over the first six months of 2023 thanks to a huge increase in interest in romantasy. Combined with increases of about 20% each in the science fiction and suspense/thriller areas, unit sales of adult fiction rose 6.3% in the first half of 2024. Sales of graphic novels continued to recede from record highs in 2022, falling 16.1% in this year’s first six months.

Books by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are leading the fantasy charge. Yarros’s Iron Flame and Fourth Wing combined to sell about 1.1 million copies, while Maas had seven books selling in big numbers, led by A Court of Thorns and Roses, which sold more than 740,000 copies. Her seven current bestsellers combined sold more than three million copies.

The only other segment to post an increase over 2023 in the year to date was young adult fiction, where sales increased 6.2%. The improvement was led by a 47% jump in sales of books in the holidays/festivals/religion space, where Laura Nowlin's two bestsellers, If Only I Had Told Her and If He Had Been with Me, reside.

Sales in the largest category, adult nonfiction, increased about 1% in the quarter, but it wasn’t enough to offset a 6.2% drop in the first period, and sales in the first half of the year were down 2.9%. As earlier data has indicated, and interviews with publishers have echoed, sales of religion books are doing well in 2024: the BookScan figures show print sales up 12.8% in the first half of the year, marking the best performance by any adult nonfiction subcategory.

The largest decline came in biography/autobiography/memoirs. Faced with tough comparisons with last year’s sales in the period—due mostly to the massive success of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare—sales dropped 13.2% in the category in the year to date.

Sales in the juvenile category remain lackluster, with print units down 2.9% in fiction and off 3.4% in nonfiction. Sales in the segment’s two biggest subcategories moved in different directions in the first six months, with general juvenile fiction sales up 1.7% but falling 7.4% in the science fiction/fantasy/magic segment.

The Bestselling Books of 2024 (So Far)

The five books by queens of romantasy Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros that placed in the top 10 of our overall and adult overall bestseller lists to date sold nearly three million copies combined, making them, at least for now, the two biggest authors of the year by a long shot. But so far, Kristin Hannah still has the year's bestselling book, The Women, which our review called an “emotionally charged page-turner” and a “magnetic wartime story.” As of the halfway mark, James Clear’s perennial bestseller Atomic Habits is the top-selling adult nonfiction title of the year, and is the only nonfiction title to place in the top 10 on our overall and adult overall lists.

On the children’s side, three Dr. Seuss titles have sold more than 950,000 copies combined, with the evergreen graduation gift Oh, the Places You'll Go! accounting for nearly half that number. Seuss’s backlist backbones were in good company, with books by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle, Dav Pilkey, and Jeff Kinney also all placing in the top 10 on our children’s overall list. In YA, Laura Nowlin ruled supreme, with If Only I Had Told Her and If He Had Been with Me pushing nearly 900,000 print sales. Rebecca Ross and Suzanne Collins also placed two titles each in the top 10 of our YA overall list, with their four books selling nearly a combined 567,500 copies.

Source: Circana BookScan