People are reading more, and we are not just talking about tweets and instant messages on their phones. The Publishing Perspectives organization’s most recent report shows that sales of print books in the United States were up 29 percent over the same quarter in 2020—which means over 205 million books were sold, the highest volume of print sales since 2004. The biggest winner was adult fiction, up 35 percent, to 39 million units sold. Interestingly, after the political fallout that resulted when the Seuss estate pulled six titles from its Dr. Seuss catalogue, sales of Dr. Seuss books nearly doubled in the first quarter of this year.
But printed books do not tell the whole story of this new reading renaissance. eBooks—that is, books loaded onto a smart device—experienced 17% gains in the year’s first quarter.
Among the biggest sellers (aside from Dr. Seuss) were, in the adult fiction category, Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens and American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Popular adult nonfiction titles: Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L Trump, and How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. Also notable was a juvenile fiction book entitled The Bad Seed by Jory John.
This article was written by an independent writer for Brewster Financial Planning LLC and is not intended as individualized legal or investment advice.