The first full shopping week after Christmas, which ran from December 29, 2019, through January 4, 2020, saw unit sales of print books fall 3.7% compared to the similar week in 2010 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan.
Only one of the major categories posted an increase in the week. Sales in adult fiction inched ahead 1% over the week ended January 5, 2019, as Where the Crawdads Sing continued to be a strong performer, selling more than 31,000 copies in the week. One new release that cracked the top five sellers in adult fiction was Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which sold nearly 11,000 copies in its first week on sale.
Sales in adult nonfiction fell 2.6% compared to 2019 despite a solid showing from The Defined Dish by Alex Snodgrass, which sold nearly 32,000 copies, making it #1 on the adult nonfiction list. Trailing Defined was The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook, which was self-published by Simon Rush and sold almost 14,000 copies in the week. The book has sold about 81,000 copies since its release last October.
Unit sales fell 5.4% in juvenile fiction compared to 2019. Dav Pilkey had the #1 title in the category in both years, but Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild sold about 61,000 copies last year, while Dog Man: Fetch 22 sold about 34,000 copies in the most recent week.
Juvenile nonfiction sales dropped almost 10% compared to a year ago. Raina Telgemeier’s Guts sold about 10,000 copies in the most recent week, beating last year’s #1 juvenile nonfiction title at this time, P is For Pterodactyl by Raj Haldar, which sold over 7,000 copies. Sales of the rest of the top 10 in 2020, however, were softer compared to a year ago: the #10 title last year, for example, sold 4,544 copies, compared to 2,467 copies sold by the book in 10th place in the most recent week.
