Hot-weather reading in Manhattan’s Central Park. Image – Getty: Mykhaylo Palinchak
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Reading’s ‘Challenge of Vying for Attention’
In a half-year report on the United States’ print book market, Circana BookScan has produced a series of statistics on January through June of this year.
Bulleting these points out for you:
- US book market print unit sales were down -0.5 percent in that six-month period as compared to January through June of 2023.
- This represents an improvement, however, over Q1’s statistics, when unit sales were down -3 percent.
- In the first half, adult fiction and young adult print books are leading market growth, while all other supercategories are down over the prior year.
- In the adult market, fiction print sales grew 5.6 million units over last year through Q2, led by fantasy and thrillers.
- Nonfiction declined by 4.1 million units, with memoir and self-help posting the steepest declines.
Adult fiction, according to Circana’s information, continues to be the market’s strongest area in 2024. This is driven, the company’s research shows, by thrillers and by fantasy, where “romantasy” is a major growth driver.
- In adult nonfiction, memoir posted the steepest declines in the first half of the year, compared to the duke of Sussex’s Spare, which was published in January 2023.
- Growth bright spots included religion and bibles, along with parenting.
While the young adult (YA) market appears to be on the rise, “growing nearly 1 million units driven by fantasy,” the reports sees #BookTok as “a significant source of discovery for all fiction, adult and YA alike.”
The Declining Children’s Book Market
At the Borsenblatt
Book sales in the children’s book market are down 3.5 million print units over the same time last year, Circana reports, with fiction accounting for more than two-thirds (71 percent) of the declines.
“Pockets of growth” in the overall children’s book market,” BookScan’s data shows, “include activity books, school readiness books, imagination and play, and biography, the latter led by celebrity-focused picture books.”
And in a follow-up report, Circana has looked particularly at middle-grade reading, in a report that may, in some elements, have parallels in the German market’s struggle with students’ reading skill levels.
Observed Middle Grade Market Underperformance
Provided to members of the press on Wednesday (July 24), the BookScan unit’s observations on the middle grade market warrant special attention.
“By age segment,” Circana’s team writes in that separate report, “middle-grade readers (aged 9 to 12 years) posted the steepest declines and contributed to nearly half (47 percent) of children’s book segment declines” in the American market.
Children’s print book sales in the States have been slowing since 2022, Circana’s special report says.
“While some of this decline can be attributed to a post-pandemic readjustment,” the team writes, “research points to reading for fun being a concern. In fact, retail point-of-sale data shows that the middle-grade readers segment is the biggest underperforming children’s age group in the US book market.”
- In the first half of 2024, BookScan’s tracking of print sales of middle-grade books dropped by 5 percent or 1.8 million fewer units sold, compared to the same time frame last year.
- Print sales across the rest of the children’s book market were down by 2 percent during the same six-month period.
Brenna Connor
“Middle-grade age is a critical point” for a young reader, says Brenna Connor, a Circana analyst, confirming that reading for pleasure “continues to face the challenge of vying for attention. Screen time is a factor, and consumer research shows a negative correlation between increased screen time and reading for fun.
“The more time children spend watching a screen, the less time they have to read.”
This, of course, is part of the “attention economy,” flagged by some in publishing for a decade or more, a competitive trend that has only widened and deepened over the years and is usually tracked in younger readers but rarely analyzed for its impact on adult reading.
Circana draws on its Future of Books study for its middle-grade report, spotlighting a trend for middle-grade book buyers to report higher instances of discovering books based on friend or family recommendations. “In addition,” the report tells us, “middle-grade book buyers are more likely to report purchasing a book at their school’s book fair, compared to other children.”
As in children’s books overall, there are pockets of growth internal to the middle-grade segment: Themes of escapism are posting gains, we read, as are robots and dragons, as well as adventure and wilderness stories.
“As an industry,” Connor says, “we need to find creative, actionable ways to improve reading frequency, and educating parents is one place to start. By understanding the connection between their children’s well-being and how often they read for fun, we can help to encourage this valuable, and hopefully lifelong, behavior.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on industry statistics is here, more on Circana research is here, and more on children’s books and the markets for young readers is here. More on the United States book industry is here. The bulk of our coverage of the United States’ publishing business lies in financial and political news because, as the world’s largest book market, the States’ industry can impact other parts of the world book business on which we focus.
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