The Weekly Scorecard: Tracking Unit Print Sales for Week Ending January 11, 2015

The retail & club channel is off to a strong start in 2015, while the mass merchandiser channel has struggled. For the week ended January 11, unit sales of print books rose 7% through retail & club outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan, compared to the similar week last year, while units dropped 9% via mass merchandisers. As a result, total unit sales were up 4% in week two of 2015, compared to the week ended Jan. 12, 2014. All four major categories had unit sales gains in the first two weeks of this year. The biggest increase came in the juvenile nonfiction segment, where the young adult edition of Unbroken topped the list, selling 8,535 copies; Minecraft titles took five of the top 10 places on that list. Adult nonfiction had a good week too, with units up 6%. The segment had the week’s top seller: The 20/20 Diet, by Phil McGraw, sold over 51,000 copies in its first week on sale. Adult fiction sales, which were down in 2014, were up 2% in the week ended Jan. 11, 2015. The top-selling debut was the mass market paperback edition of Silver Thaw, by Catherine Anderson, which sold just under 15,000 copies. The #1 adult fiction seller was All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, which sold just under 21,000 copies.

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.