The industry feared that unit sales of print books might experience a sharp drop in 2023 as the economy slows down. The recorded small quarterly decline should ease such fears. With four successive weeks of increases to the first quarter close out, unit sales of print books were almost flat with 2022, seeing a slight drop of 0.3%.
In addition, the most recent quarter saw sales of 184.4 million copies of print books. This is almost 17% higher than the 157.7 million copies sold in Q1 of 2019. These figures indicate that sales of print books may remain at a steady slope above the point before the lockdown-induced surge, which started in the spring of 2020.
Sales of Print Book Inched Up Thanks to Adult Fiction
In Q1 2023, young and adult fiction books offset declines in four other popular categories. It is important to note that young and adult fiction books rose in sales by an 8.5% increase in 2022. Now, in the recent Q1, unit sales of adult fiction have increased by another 6.8%.
Romance is the primary driver of adult fiction sales, and this genre has seen an increase of nearly 45%, which is huge. Colleen Hoover’s It Starts with Us, and It Ends – these two novels led the romance genre, selling over one million copies of the romance novels. In addition, Hoover earned seven books on the top 25 list, selling around 2.3 million copies.
The only other author to have multiple books on the list was another popular BookTok favourite, Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novelist The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & the Six made the sale of 460,000 copies in total.
Insights into Other Genres
Other than adult fiction, the horror/occult/psychological subcategory rose in sales by 30% at outlets reporting to BookScan. Graphic novels saw a significant increase in sales in 2021 and 2022. But their sales dropped by 12.6% in Q1 2023.
Sales of young adult print books saw an increase of 2.7% in the quarter, fuelled by a 23.3% increase in the social situations/health/family subcategory. The top title in this category is If He Had Been with Me by Laura Nowlin, making sales of over 160,000 copies. On the other hand, adult nonfiction, which is the largest category in the industry, saw a 3.6% sales drop after a 10% decline for all in 2022. Popular subcategories during the pandemic were cooking/entertainment and home/gardening. Now, their sales have cooled down, with Q1 sales off 16.3% and 10.7%, respectively.
When it comes to travel books, sales continued to increase, up 11.1%. The victory of Spare by Prince Harry resulted in a 19.7% increase in sales of memoirs/autobiography/biography. In addition, sales of juvenile fiction dropped by 1.7%, and animals, as well as holidays, festivals, and religion subcategories, saw an increase of .2% and 12.5%, respectively. This increase was offset by drops in other major areas, including science fiction/fantasy/magic, as their sales dropped by 8%.
The major trend was the constant erosion of mass market paperback, as their sales collapsed by 17.2% after dropping by nearly 19% in 2022.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
