The Weekly Scorecard: Tracking Unit Print Sales for Week Ending January 24, 2016

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel

Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

Unit Sales of Print Books by Format

Unit sales of print books rose 4% in the week ended Jan. 24, 2016, compared to the similar week last year, at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. The week was a quiet one for new books. Danielle Steel’s Blue was the top-selling new title in the week, as well as the overall top seller, with just under 29,000 copies sold. Following Blue in adult fiction, at #2, was the mass market paperback edition of Steel’s The Prodigal Son, which sold almost 21,000 copes in its first week. Despite the one-two punch by Steel, unit sales of adult fiction titles fell 1% in the week, compared to the week ended Jan. 25, 2015. Unit sales of adult nonfiction rose 9%, and Marie Kondo had the first- and third-bestselling books in the category. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was in the top spot, selling 28,000 copies, while her follow-up, Spark Joy, came in third, selling just over 18,000 copies. The book that showed the strongest improvement over the previous week, however, was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, which sold over 25,000 copies—an 81% jump over sales in the week ended January 17. Unit sales in the juvenile nonfiction category increased 10% in the week ended Jan. 24, 2016, compared to the similar week last year, as the top seven books on the bestseller list remained the same, although the order was shuffled. The list included two Johanna Basford coloring books and three DK Star Wars titles. Sales slipped slightly in juvenile fiction in the week, with the bestselling title in the segment, Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid: Old School, selling just under 20,000 copies.