The Weekly Scorecard: Tracking Unit Print Sales for Week Ending November 8, 2015

Unit sales of print books jumped 10% in the week ended Nov. 8, 2015, compared to the similar week last year, at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. All four major categories posted gains, led by the adult nonfiction segment, where units increased 15% over the week ended Nov. 9, 2014. Three of the category’s six top-selling titles were new in the week: Troublemaker by Leah Remini landed at #3, selling more than 37,000 copies; Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger was in the fourth spot, selling about 35,000 copies; and Crippled America by Donald Trump landed in sixth spot, selling more than 27,000 copies. Juvenile nonfiction unit sales rose 14%. While no new books cracked the category’s top 10 list, most titles had good week-over-week increases, including Christmas to Color by Mary Tanana and The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book by Jeff Kinney, which saw sales rise 142% and 137%, respectively. Kinney’s newest Wimpy Kid title, Old School, was the bestselling book of the week, with about 314,000 units sold in its first week—down by about 4,000 copies compared to the first-week sales of the Wimpy Kid title released last year at this time. Still, unit sales in the juvenile fiction segment rose 6% over the comparable week in 2014. Adult fiction units increased 5%, with Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams landing at #1, selling almost 60,000 units in its first week on sale.

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel

Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

Unit Sales of Print Books by Format

Source: Nielsen BookScan and Publishers Weekly. Nielsen BookScan’s U.S. Consumer Market Panel covers approximately 80% of the print book market and continues to grow.