Through August 2022, print book sales are down by 5 percent versus 2021, which is considered very good performance. Adult fiction continues to sell better than last year, driven in part by #BookTok, while adult nonfiction and children’s nonfiction are each down by about 10 percent.
New releases performing well include:
- Adult fiction: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back and The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)
- YA fiction: The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes and Belladonna by Adalyn Grace
- Nonfiction: The Great Reset by Alex Jones (despite his defamation conviction) and Feeding Littles and Beyond by Ali Maffucci
NPD BookScan has also just released a special analysis of the romance market, which is the leading growth category so far this year and responsible for two-thirds of the overall gains in the adult fiction market. This growth is specific to print; ebook sales volume actually declined by 16 percent. NPD’s Kristen McLean notes in a press release, “When we looked at romance author sales earlier this year, it was clear that BookTok is contributing to the most romance gains and helping to create a new romance fan base among young readers. The fact that the growth is happening only in print formats, coupled with the fact that traditional romance authors are not keeping up with the overall sector growth, indicates that this truly is a whole new group of readers coming to this genre.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
