As 2021 rolls on, there's still no sign of a slowdown in print sales on the horizon. In the week ended May 8, 2021, unit sales of print books rose 8.1% over the previous week at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Compared to the week ended May 9, 2020, print unit sales increased 10.1%. Overall, unit sales were up 25% through May 8, 2021.
The adult fiction category continues to post good gains, with print unit sales up 22.1% over the comparable week in 2020. Three of the top four bestselling titles in the category were new last week, led by 21st Birthday by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, which was #1, selling more than 51,000 copies. In third place on the list was Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me, which sold over 33,000 copies, followed by Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which sold nearly 30,000 copies.
Interest in Leigh Bardugo’s titles, driven by the release of Netflix’s show based on Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy, helped to boost sales in the young adult fiction segment 77% over 2020. Shadow and Bone, the first title in the trilogy, stayed in the top spot on the category list, selling more than 21,000 copies, and five other Bardugo titles sold about 45,000 combined copies. Victoria Aveyard’s Realm Breaker landed in the second spot on the category list, selling more than 18,000 copies in its first week on sale.
New titles helped to drive up unit sales in the adult nonfiction category by 9.1% over last year. Killing the Mob by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard was #1 in the category, selling nearly 46,000 copies in its first week on sale. The Premonition by Michael Lewis landed in the fourth spot on the category list, selling almost 31,000 copies, while Josh Hawley’s The Tyranny of Big Tech sold nearly 21,000 copies, making it #6 on the category list.
The juvenile nonfiction category had another tough week, with units falling 19%. The decline pushed the segment to negative territory for the year to date, with units down 1.1% compared to the same period last year.
