Print Units Fell Again in Mid-February

Unit sales of print books fell 6.4% in the week ended Feb. 23, 2019, compared to the similar week in 2018, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The decline came despite one of the strongest debuts so far this year: Andrew McCabe’s The Threat sold nearly 67,000 copies in its first week, knocking Michelle Obama’s Becoming out of the top spot on both the adult nonfiction list and the overall bestseller list. The adult fiction category had another bad week, with print units down 8.7% compared to the week ended Feb. 24, 2018. The #1 seller in the category was The Chef by James Patterson, which sold more than 27,000 copies in its first week. Last year at this time, Fifty Fifty by Patterson and Candice Fox tied with Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone for the top spot on the adult fiction bestseller list, each selling just over 23,000 copies. Print units in the juvenile fiction category declined 14% compared to 2018, when Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time sold more than 35,000 copies. The top seller on the category list last week was Dav Pilkey’s Brawl of the Wild (Dog Man #6), which sold almost 27,000 copies. Print unit sales fell 9.5% in juvenile nonfiction. In both the week ended Feb. 23, 2019, and the similar week last year, There Is No Place Like Space by Tish Rabe and Oh Say Can You Say Di-No-Saur by Bonnie Worth were in first and second place, respectively, on the category bestseller list. But in 2018, Space sold nearly 15,000 copies, compared to around 7,000 in the most recent week, while Di-No-Saur sold about 13,000 last year, compared to just under 7,000 copies in the most recent week.

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Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

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Unit Sales of Print Books by Format

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