An Easter Sales Bounce for Board Books
Apr 14, 2017 Publishers Weekly A version of this article appeared in the 04/17/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Sales Bounce for Board Books
It looks like board books (were) popular gifts for Easter this year. At outlets that report to NPD BookScan, unit sales of the format were 83% higher in the week ended Apr. 9, 2017, than in the comparable week in 2016, contributing to a 13% increase in total unit sales. The juvenile categories were the biggest beneficiaries of the board book bonanza: unit sales of juvenile fiction books were 39% higher and juvenile nonfiction sales were 33% higher than in the comparable week last year. Three of the week’s top-selling fiction titles were board books, led by Happy Easter Mouse by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond, which sold more than 16,000 copies, putting it in second place on the juvenile fiction bestseller list. In juvenile nonfiction, The Animals board book was the top title, selling almost 11,000 copies to edge out Easter Eggstravaganza Mad Libs by Roger Price, which sold slightly more than 10,000 copies. And it wasn’t only board books that sold well in the week: three editions of Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why sold more than 54,000 copies, aided by the debut of the Netflix television adaptation.