Unit sales of print books dropped 4% in April compared to a year ago at stores that report to Circana BookScan, the company said in a release. The decline was due in part to an earlier Easter, industry analyst for U.S. books Brenna Connor said, with the holiday falling in late March this year compared to April in 2023. Still, overall trends remained the same in April has they have for much of the year—adult and young adult fiction is doing well, while sales of nonfiction lag.
The top-selling book in April was Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: The Scarlett Shredder, which sold nearly 201,000 copies. On the adult side, fantasy and romance titles took seven of the top 10 April slots, led by Emily Henry’s new Funny Story, which sold more than 167,000 copies. A new book by Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar, had a good start, selling over 72,000 copies in the month, which put it in fifth place on the adult April bestseller list. Highlighting the struggles of adult nonfiction, the only nonfiction title to make the adult list was The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which sold over 70,000 copies.
Another trend Connor pointed to in April was the improvement in frontlist sales, which have been struggling. Connor noted that April was the third straight month that frontlist sales took market share away from backlist. Even with the improvement, however, for the first four months of 2024, frontlist sales accounted for only 30% of total unit sales.
With the April decline, total print sales in the first four months of the year were down 2% from the comparable period in 2023.
