All in, 2023 came in 2.6 percent below 2022 in terms of print unit sales, according to Circana BookScan. That still beats the performance of 2020 and is way ahead of pre-pandemic 2019. Fiction sales were 1 percent better than 2022.
Within adult fiction, fantasy saw the highest percentage growth, with sales increasing by nearly 52 percent, driven by Rebecca Yarros. In addition to Yarros, the most successful adult fiction authors of 2023 include Colleen Hoover (of course), Emily Henry, Ana Huang, and Sarah J. Maas.
Meanwhile, adult nonfiction saw print sales decline about 3 percent—a slower decline than in 2022, when it dropped by 10 percent. The category was helped by celebrity memoirs by Prince Harry and Britney Spears.
Circana BookScan reports that US print book sales exceeded expectations in the last month of the year, leading to an overall better result for 2023. Analyst Kristen McLean notes that week 51 of 2023 hit the highest week-51 sales of any of the last five years. (Adult fiction and YA fiction drove growth in December.) McLean writes, “My primary takeaway from this is that consumers are fully back to a pre-pandemic mindset when it comes to their trust in retailers’ abilities to get them what they want quickly from a fulfillment point of view. No more worrying about supply chain or delivery capabilities. There was also plenty of merchandise in stores to help last-minute sales, and books are an easy buy under pressure.”
For extra good feels: The US book market out-performed the rest of the general merchandise market tracked by Circana, doing 7 percent better overall on a unit basis. McLean says, “Books’ perceived value for the price may be one reason for this.”
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.
