Sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy show no signs of slowing down. After falling a bit the week after Mother’s Day, print sales for the week ended May 27 rose for all three titles with Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed both seeing sales gains of 13% each at the outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan. Sales of Fifty Shades of Grey increased 7% over the prior week. What that means for last week is that the trilogy accounted for 46% of all trade paperback fiction sales in the accounts reporting to BookScan and 26% of all fiction sales. The roughly 815,000 copies sold of the trilogy also accounted for 13% of all trade paperback sales last week.
In the similar week in 2011, the top three trade paperbacks, Heaven is for Real, The Help and Hunger Games accounted for 2% of trade paper sales. For the record, Fifty Shades of Grey sold just over 400,000 copies last week, while Darker and Freed sold about 225,000 and 190,000 copies, respectively, last week at outlets tracked by BookScan, which receives data from outlets that account for about 75% of print sales.
