US print book sales fall in first half of 2023

Unit sales of books in the US dropped 2.7% in the first six months of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, sales dropped from 363.4 million in the first six months of 2022 to 353.5 million this year at outlets that report to Circana BookScan.

Sales of adult fiction are up, but declines were reported in the other major categories. Backlist titles are doing better than frontlist, according to the report, with backlist sales down 2.1% compared to frontlist’s 4.2% drop.

Spare (Random House) by Prince Harry boosted first-quarter sales, however no title came close to matching its sales level in the second quarter. New releases have helped rocket romance into the fastest-growing adult fiction genre in the first six months of 2023, with sales up 34.6%, while books in the horror/occult/psychology and fantasy genres also seeing strong gains, with sales up 32.5% and 26.5% respectively.

Titles that did well in the first half of the year were Dav Pilkey’s Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea (Scholastic), Colleen Hoover books, Heart Bones (S&S UK) and Never Never (HQ) and Emily Henry’s Happy Place (Viking).

The 2.7% decline in the first half of 2023 marks a continued slow-down in book sales, following a 6.6% drop in the first six months of 2022 compared to 2021. Sales were 387.5 million in the first half of 2021, 8.5% higher than in the same period this year. Sales are, however, up 12% in the first half of this year compared to 2019. Graphic novels were the third-largest genre in adult fiction.

In non-fiction, memoir, travel and religion books made gains, whereas sales of home and gardening books dropped, as did cooking and entertaining titles. Only one children’s category saw an increase, with sales of “animals” books up 14%. The largest decline came in the sci-fi/fantasy/magic area, where sales fell 11.3%. Sales in all juvenile non-fiction sub-categories fell in the period, according to the report.

Trade paperback sales were down 1.8%, while hardback sales were down 3.9%. Mass market paperbacks were down 17.8% and only accounted for 3.6% of sales recorded by BookScan in the first six months of the year.