US print sales down 4.8% YTD

In the US, unit sales of print books were down 4.8% in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2021, reports Publishers Weekly.

According to NPD BookScan, there were 542.6 million print units sold from January–September, down from 570 million last year.

Adult fiction has been the strongest performing category this year, up 9.2% over the first nine months. All four books that have sold more than one million copies—three titles by Colleen Hoover as well as Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing—are in the adult fiction category.

Young adult fiction was the only other major category to post an increase in sales, up 0.4%. Category sales were led by author Jenny Han: four of her books tied to the streaming hit The Summer I Turned Pretty sold about 1.1 million copies combined. Sales in juvenile fiction and nonfiction were down 8% and 9.9%, respectively

In 2021 US print sales by unit rose 8.9% over 2020 levels.

Category: International news