Print Units Slipped 0.4% in Mid-September

Unit sales of print books dipped 0.4% in the week ended Sept. 21, 2019, compared to the similar week in 2018, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Gains in the juvenile categories were not enough to fully offset declines in the adult categories. Juvenile nonfiction had the largest increase over the week ended Sept. 22, 2018, with units up 13.9%. Guts by Raina Telgemeier topped the category list, selling more than 76,000 copies in its first week. In a distant second was Best Friends by Shannon Hale, which sold more than 8,000 copies. The release of The Last Kids on Earth and the Midnight Blade by Max Brallier gave a boost to the juvenile fiction category, where unit sales rose 2.6% over 2018. Sales of The Last Kids neared 18,000 copies in its first week, putting it in second place on the category list, trailing only behind Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls, which sold nearly 45,000 copies. Following a strong showing in the week ended Sept. 15, 2019, adult fiction sales declined 3.7% in the most recent week compared to 2018. Sales of both Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Stephen King’s The Institute slowed considerably in their second week, with The Institute selling just under 50,000 copies, moving it ahead of The Testaments, which was in second place with more than 44,000 copies sold. Print unit sales fell 2.5% in adult nonfiction, due mainly to a difficult comparison to last year at this time, when Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House sold more than 344,000 copies in its first week.

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