Print market up 11.4% for first quarter of 2016

The print market is up 11.4% in value for the first 12 weeks of 2016, according to Nielsen Bookscan’s Total Consumer Market. This is the first double-digit year-on-year rise for the first quarter of the year since Nielsen records began.

From the first week of January to the fourth week of March, 39.5m books were sold, worth £312m, the first time the book market has surpassed £300m in value in the first quarter since 2011. It also represents a 7.3% rise in volume on 2015.

Average selling price is also dizzyingly high— at an average of  £7.91 over the past 12 weeks, it is the highest a.s.p since 2004. For the first time since 2002, a.s.p. is yet to drop lower than £7.00 in the first 12 weeks of the year.

Clean-eating phenomenon Joe Wicks has definitely helped; the £4.3m brought in by Lean in 15 (Bluebird) in January to March represents 1.3% of the entire market. Other big “new year, new you” titles, such as Ella Woodward’s Deliciously Ella Every Day (Yellow Kite) and Dr Michael Mosley’s The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (Short), saw January this year post a 6.8% volume increase on January 2015.

But the combined heft of Mother’s Day and World Book Day packed a sales punch—the first week of March, when both events fell this year, brought in £28.9m, the highest seven-day value in the first quarter since 2010. Mother’s Day hits such as Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (BBC) and The Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups title How it Works: The Mum (Michael Joseph) jostled for space in the top 10 with this year’s two World Book Day number ones: Cavan Scott’s The Escape: Star Wars (Egmont) and Roald Dahl’s The Great Mouse Plot (Puffin).