Juvenile Categories Drive 5% Unit Gain in Early September

Unit sales of print books rose 5% in the week ended Sept. 9, 2018, over the comparable week in 2017, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The gain was driven by the juvenile segment, where the nonfiction and fiction categories had increases of 13% and 7%, respectively. Contributing to the gain in nonfiction was a strong performance by The Care and Keeping of You by Valorie Schaefer and Josee Masse, which jumped up to the fourth spot on the category bestseller list, selling more than 4,000 copies. Sonia Sotomayor’s new book, Turning Pages, sold more than 3,000 copies in its first week, putting it at #10 on the category list. Juvenile fiction continued to benefit from strong sales of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas, which remained the top title in the category, selling over 64,000 copies. Although Halloween is still more than a month away, Little Blue Truck’s Halloween by Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry had a sales spike, selling nearly 8,000 copies in the week. Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis sold more than 53,000 copies, leading to a 5% increase in sales in the adult nonfiction category over the week ended Sept. 10, 2017. Also contributing to the gain was 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harai, which sold more than 12,000 copies in its first week, putting it in second place, behind Girl, on the category list. Adult fiction had a less than 1% decline in unit sales in the week. J.D. Robb’s Leverage in Death debuted at #2 on the category bestseller list, with more than 28,000 copies sold, and Danielle Steel’s In His Father’s Footsteps was third, with nearly 21,000 copies sold.

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Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

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