UK sales value up in 2023 as volume declines

In the UK, an increase in average selling prices meant the market was up by 1.3% in 2023, despite volume sales being down by 5%, reports the Bookseller.

According to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market data, the market in 2023 was worth £1.83 billion (A$3.47b), with sales of 198.6 million copies, 10.5 million fewer books than the previous year.

This still represents ‘the second largest (official) annual BookScan unit-sale total in 12 years’, says the Bookseller, but it also notes that this result is still ‘miles off the market, beginning in the mid-Noughties, which recorded nine consecutive years of unit sales greater than 200 million’.

Average selling price was a record £9.23 (A$17.51) in 2023, with UK consumers paying almost £0.50 (A$0.95) more per book in 2023 than they did in 2020, the previous all-time high.

Top 2023 sales included those of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare (Bantam), which was the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time. It topped the year’s bestsellers, having sold 707,000 copies to date. Spare was followed by The Last Devil to Die (Richard Osman, Viking), which sold almost 530,000 copies, Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus, Transworld), which sold 522,128 copies, Osman’s The Bullet That Missed (Penguin), which sold 423,683 copies, and cookbook Bored of Lunch (Nathan Anthony, Ebury Press), which sold 413,701 copies.

Category: International news