Led by The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins’ newly released prequel to her blockbuster Hunger Games series, unit sales of print books rose 5.5% last week over the week ended May 16 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Songbirds and Snakes sold just over 270,000 copies at BookScan outlets, leading to a 88.3% jump in unit sales in the young adult fiction category.
The success of Songbirds and Snakes also drove a 11.1% gain in print unit sales over the week ended May 25, 2019.
In addition to the huge gain in the YA segment, the two juvenile categories had a good week. Unit sales in the juvenile nonfiction category rose 21.7% over the week ended May 16 led by a 106% jump in sales of biographies/autobiographies where Just Ask! by Sonia Sotomayor and Who is Michael Jordan? by Kirsten Anderson topped the category chart. The education/reference/language, history/sports/people/places, and social situations/family/health segments all had better than 20% unit sales increases over the prior week.
All segments within the juvenile fiction category posted gains over the prior week, leading to a 7.7% increase in unit sales. The history/sports/places/people segment had the largest gain, up 16.3%, followed by the classics segment.
Unit sales in adult fiction were flat in the week and print sales of adult nonfiction dipped 1.5%.
