As noted on Friday, backlist comprised 70 percent of all print book sales in 2022 as measured by NPD Bookscan, and in line with that roughly three quarters of Bookscan’s top 200 books of the year were also published before 2022. They range from the works of Colleen Hoover — who claimed four of the top five slots, and sold over 14.3 million copies across multiple titles — plus social media discoveries (The Body Keeps the Score), books adapted to film (Where the Crawdads Sing), perennial bestsellers (The Alchemist, Dr. Seuss), and reissues of popular titles (the illustrated edition of Harry […]
Bestseller Radar
USA Today Bestseller List “On Hiatus” After Longtime Editor Is Laid Off
As part of significant layoffs at USA Today and Gannett, approximately 200 newsroom employees were let go at the beginning of December, including longtime editor of the USA Today Best-Selling Books list Mary Cadden. She produced the list since 2007. (Cadden can be reached at mary.c.cadden@gmail.com.) Following her departure, the paper did not issue the new weekly list due on December 8 (for sales through December 4). The last live list covers sales through November 27. The newspaper’s managing editor for life and entertainment Laura Trujillo tells PL in answer to our query that, “As the end of the year approaches, […]
Top of the Charts: The Year’s Biggest New Release So Far
As print sales for 2021 recorded by NPD Bookscan have shown unprecedented strength so far — still up 17 percent year-over-year even with recent moderation — the very top of the list has in contrast been uncharacteristically soft. Big bestsellers have not been pulling the market, even though frontlist in general is up 11 percent for the year, and frontlist adult hardcovers as a group are selling almost 23 percent better year-to-date than the average from the past five years. Up until this week, only three new 2021 releases opened with tracked print sales of over 100,000 units: Dav Pilkey’s […]
People, Etc.
Will Murphy has joined the ghostwriting and publishing services firm Kevin Anderson & Associates as senior executive editor-at-large. He was previously executive editor at Random House. Kim Daly has been promoted to copy chief at Workman Publishing. Awards Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld‘s The Discomfort of Evening (Graywolf) won the International Booker Prize. At 29, they are the youngest author to ever win the prize. They will split the £50,000 prize with translator Michele Hutchison. Bookselling The Barnes & Noble store in Roxbury, NJ closed yesterday after 26 years, as part of a redevelopment of the mall where they were housed. […]
Briefs
Controversies After UK thriller writer Mark Dawson admitted — or boasted? — about buying his way onto the Sunday Times bestseller list with a modest purchase of 400 hardcovers, Nielsen Bookscan has recalculated that Top 10 chart to remove Dawson’s book and the paper will issue a correction. Nielsen says they initially believed the purchase was related to a virtual book signing. Dawson, who still promotes his “top 10” listing on his Twitter page, said in a Twitter thread he was only cheating a little, not a lot: “If I was intent on ‘gaming the system’ I would have bought […]
Bookselling: Easter Book Sales Fall Short; More on the Prospects for Independent Booksellers
NPD Bookscan reported print book sales for the week ending April 11 of 12.47 million units. While that is nicely higher than the previous week, the proper comparison is to the week just before Easter a year ago, since book sales always spike measurably right before the holiday. The comparable week a year ago — ending April 20 — saw sales of 13.97 million units, making this year’s holiday week down over 10.7 percent in comparison. Per the trend during the pandemic, juvenile books continue to account for most of the week-over-week gains, registering sales of 6.385 million units (compared […]