Another poor showing by the children’s segments led to unit sales of print books dropping 4.8% last week from the week ended June 25, 2022. The largest decline came in young adult fiction, where sales plunged 25.4% at outlets that report to Circana BookScan.
The category faces a difficult comparison to last year, when Jenny Han’s titles were enjoying a sales surge thanks to the release of the Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty, based on Han’s book of the same name. Last year at this time, five Han titles sold about 210,000 copies combined, led by It’s Not Summer without You, which sold nearly 59,000 copies. Last week’s top seller in the category was If He Had Been with Me by Laura Nowlin, which sold just over 14,000 copies.
Adult fiction was the only category to post an increase over 2022, eking out a 0.4% gain. The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand remained #1 in the category, selling just over 30,000 copies. The best performing new release was Ruth Ware’s Zero Days, which sold over 20,000 copies, landing it in eighth place on the segment list.
Print book sales fell 3.3% in adult nonfiction. Atomic Habits by Jmaes Clear returned to the top spot in the category, selling over 18,000 copies. Sixty One by Chris Paul was the bestselling new release, selling over 9,000 copies, making it #8 on the segment list.
In the children's segment, fiction sales fell 5.9% and nonfiction declined 8.4%. Dog Man: Twenty Fleas Under the Sea by Dav Pilkey was #1 in children's fiction, as it has been for most of the last three months, selling over 19,000 copies. A year ago, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine was the top seller, selling about 28,000 copies
