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Book sales in the first half of 2024 are down .5% from the previous year, lead by strong sales in adult and young adult fiction, according to new data from Circana. Adult fiction sales increased by 5.6 million units, an increase over the previous year. Fantasy and thriller book sales led the category, with “romantasy” books helping drive adult fiction sales. Manga, on the other hand, grew the least in the adult fiction realm year over year.
Sales in adult nonfiction were down 4.1 million units in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023. Memoir dropped the most in sales, likely in part due to the huge sales in early 2023 of memoirs like Prince Harry’s Spare. There were areas of growth in nonfiction, though, including religion, bibles, and parenting books.
Conversely, children’s book sales were down 3.5 million units since the same time last year, this time lead by a decrease in fiction sales. Middle grade books showed the steeped decline in sales year over year and accounted for nearly half of the decrease in sales in the children’s category. This might not come as a total surprise, given the decreased placement of middle grade books in the largest brick and mortar bookseller in the US, Barnes & Noble. Children’s fiction as a whole accounted for two-thirds of the sales decrease. Sales in children’s books were not down across the board, as activity books, imagination and play books, and biographies–especially those focused on celebrities–saw growth.
The young adult category saws its sales up year over year by almost one million units. The primary driver? Fantasy and most frequently, titles discovered, shared, and highlighted on #BookTok.
As for the top selling books of the year so far across all categories? Check out the titles below. Only three have been published in 2024:
Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.