The Weekly Scorecard: Tracking Unit Print Sales for Week Ending January 29, 2017

Unit sales of print books fell 1% in the week ended Jan. 29, 2017, compared to the similar week last year, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The decline was due entirely to a poor performance in the mass merchandiser channel, where units dropped 18% compared to the week ended Jan. 31, 2016. For the first month of this year, units through that channel were down 11% compared to January 2016. The biggest decline in the week ended Jan. 29, 2017, among the major book segments came in juvenile fiction, where units fell 5%. Veronica Roth’s Carve the Mark, the top seller in the category in its first week the prior week, saw sales drop significantly in its second week, selling more than 11,000 copies and putting it in second place on the list. Jeff Kinney’s Double Down, the 11th installment in his Wimpy Kid series, was on top in the category with just under 17,000 copies sold. Adult nonfiction had the best performance in the week, with units up 3%. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly remained in first place on the adult nonfiction list, selling more than 22,000 copies. Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss had a big boost in sales in the week, selling more than 15,000 copies, which landed it in the fourth spot on the category list. Unit sales rose 2% in juvenile nonfiction, led by I Got This: To Gold and Beyond by Laurie Hernandez, which sold more than 9,000 copies in its first week, putting it at #1 on the category list. Unit sales in adult fiction fell 4% in the week despite a surge of interest in George Orwell’s 1984, which sold almost 26,000 copies and landed in the top spot on the category list.

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel

Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

Unit Sales of Print Books by Format