Print Units Inched Up in Second Week of August

August is starting off as a sluggish month for book sales. Unit sales of print books rose 1% in the week ended Aug. 12, 2018, over the comparable week in 2017 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. The small increase follows a 0.2% decline in the first week of the month, compared to the first week of August 2017. Juvenile nonfiction had the biggest gain over the week ended Aug. 13, 2017, with units up 3%. Once again, Big Pre-school Workbook was the #1 title in the category, selling more than 10,000 copies. The ever-popular First 100 Words by Roger Priddy moved into second place, selling over 9,000 copies. Sales in adult fiction have been soft through the first seven months of 2018, but units did rise 1% last week, over the comparable week in 2017. With an assist from the new movie of same name, Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan was the top seller in the category, selling more than 25,000 copies. A new book by Sandra Brown, Tailspin, landed at #2, selling nearly 19,000 copies. The adult nonfiction and the juvenile fiction segments both had unit increases of less than 1% over the comparable week last year. A nationwide event Aug. 2 to promote Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis helped to boost sales to almost 47,000 copies, making it the adult nonfiction segment’s’s biggest seller for the week ended Aug. 12. The top-selling new book in the category was Max Lucado’s Unshakable Hope, which sold nearly 13,000 copies, good enough for seventh place on the category list. In juvenile fiction, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas edged out The Night Before Kindergarten by Natasha Wing for first place in the segment, with both selling over 12,000 copies in the week.

Unit Sales of Print Books by Channel

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Unit Sales of Print Books by Category

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Unit Sales of Print Books by Format

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