2023 Australian market overview

Overall, the book market was down in Australia in 2023 by 2.1% in value and 1.7% in volume, according to figures from Nielsen BookData’s BookScan service. However, sales in 2023 were up both by value and volume when compared to 2021 figures, and were boosted by strong Christmas sales.

Nielsen’s 2023 snapshot, covering 1 January to 30 December 2023, shows the Australian book market in 2023 was worth $1.33 billion in value, down from $1.4 billion in 2022, while 2023 sales by volume were at 69.8 million units, down from 70.9 million. Nielsen’s snapshot shows the value of adult fiction grew by 5% to represent 29% of the market, while adult nonfiction declined by 5% and represents 42% of the market. Children’s, which represents 29% of the market, fell by 4.4% compared to 2022.

While the children’s category dropped for 2023, however, this dip came after a big boost due to the pandemic and was likely a correction after the category grew 7.7% in 2022.

The top three $1 million-plus categories by value growth in 2023 were language and linguistics (up 18% to $4.1 million); atlases, maps and travel (up 14% to $19.4 million); and genre fiction (up 14% to $225.9 million).

Colleen Hoover took out the top spot as the highest selling author by value, with 878,000 books sold, worth $13.4 million; while RecipeTin Eats: Dinner (Nagi Maehashi, Macmillan) was the highest selling title by value, having sold 254,000 copies, worth $6.6 million.

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