At Miami Beach, July 28. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Felix Mizioznikov
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
July 2022: 51 Million Units Over 2019′
The United States’ market’s print book sales declined by 1.6 million units in July by comparison to the four weeks prior, according to data from the NPD Group’s NPD BookScan update from Kristen McLean.
In her discussion, McLean writes, “Losses in July are historically normal and were a little shallower this year, resulting in 1-point year-to-date gain. July ended 6 percent lower for the year to date on a total print volume of 414 million units, which is 26 million units under 2021 but 51 million units over 2019.”
The upshot, then, is a steady field, “pretty consistent trends across the first seven months of the year,” McLean says. “I don’t expect any major change of course before Labor Day; it seems increasingly likely that we’ll see incremental market movements heading into Q4, and at the moment the larger economic volatility isn’t hitting too hard.”
Image: The NPD Group/NPD BookScan, four weeks ending July 30, 2022, US print sales only
As far as bestseller charts, July’s bestsellers in the States were all fiction, McLean points out, and nine of the Top 10 were adult fiction.
Four of the Top 10 were frontlist titles—again, a point being carefully watched in the American market. The four frontlisted titles have their titles in blue below. Only one of those bestsellers is in hardcover.
As in our recent reports, you’ll see author Colleen Hoover holding dominance in the Top 10, this time with fully half of that upper echelon hers—five of the 10 top titles.
Image: The NPD Group/NPD BookScan, four weeks ending July 30, 2022, US print sales only
More from Publishing Perspectives on industry statistics is here, more on the NPD Group’s work is here, more on the work of Kristen McLean is here, and more on the United States book industry is here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact is here.