The summer Non-Fiction market 2024 — Factual books begin to feel the Pinch

While the summer of 2024 saw a bumper performance for fiction – driven by a rising backlist in the Romance & Sagas category – Non-Fiction has seen a decline on 2023, with revenue through Nielsen Bookscan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) down by more than £13m, a reduction of just under 8%.

Non-Fiction’s bestseller in Summer 2024 was Pinch of Nom: Air Fryer from Kay & Kate Allinson, that gives the food bloggers an increase of 16% against the same period last year. In fact, books which feature the words “air fryer” in their titles were worth £1.5m this year, only slightly down, proving that this is one craze that may not be going anywhere fast.

At the top of the 2023 chart for the 12 weeks from 7th July was Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients Mediterranean – with sales just shy of £1m, Oliver alone accounts for 5% (£784,638) of the total difference. Though that was published in late August, compared to the late September publication date of his 2024 hardback, Simply Jamie, so we are not exactly comparing like-for-like. Despite the Oliver dip, the Food & Drink categories in the TCM combined to provide £10m in 2024, only fractionally down on 2023.

The top 50 titles for Non-Fiction over the summer were worth £11.2m – this is a chunky drop of £2.6m when compared with the summer of 2023, nearly a third of which is accounted for by The Naked Chef.

One category that is suffering inside the Top 50 this year is Biography & Autobiography, which has 50% fewer titles featured on the list this year, with just nine titles interesting customers enough to break into the top of the ranking. Those nine books are £1.1m behind the equivalent titles from 2023, driven in part by Korean pop sensation BTS, whose 10-year anniversary celebration, Behind the Scenes, delivered £443,000 that hasn’t been annualised this year.

Ex-MP-turned-podcast presenter Rory Stewart has the bestselling memoir in both years, but despite the paperback edition of Politics on the Edge selling 20,000 more units than the hardback did in the summer of 2023 – though that, as might be expected, isn’t quite enough to match his value performance – the book delivered £315,000 less this year. It’s a similar story for Chris Broad’s Abroad in Japan, which accounts for £185,000 of 2024’s miss versus 2023.

These three titles along with Oliver account for £1.7m of the Non-Fiction’s category decline with another £100,000 coming from Miriam Margolyes’ Oh Miriam! and 2023 sensation Murdle, down over £250,000. In fact, the crime-based logic puzzles are guilty of half of the Humour, Trivia & Puzzles category change in the Top 5,000 this year.

There are just five BookScan categories (out of 19) that have enjoyed increased sales in the 12 weeks beginning 7th July: Sport; Leisure & Lifestyle; Politics & Government; Religion and History & Military – with the last up £356,682 when compared to 2023.

The titans of history are David Mitchell – whose paperback edition of Unruly has delivered £63,000 more than the hardback edition did in 2023 – and Ben Macintyre whose latest piece The Siege has racked up almost £306,000 this year, with no equivalent title in 2023.

Compared to Fiction, the Non-Fiction category is much less front-ended. While the Top 50 titles are worth £11.2m, the remaining titles in the top 5,000 – books that have sold more than 350 copies across the 12 weeks – account for £63m, which is just 46% of the category’s total revenue for the period. The remaining £85m is made up from 464,812 other titles that all fall below the Top 5,000 threshold.

Those titles account for 54% of Non-Fiction sales and are responsible for a similar amount of the category’s reduction over the summer, suggesting that customers are finding their factual inspiration elsewhere. This is especially apparent when compared to the overall TCM for the same three months, which is down just £1.5m.