Perhaps the man with most cause for concern will be James Daunt, the Atlantic-straddling CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, who will already be having sleepness nights as the post Pandemic, post-Brexit, Ukraine-impacted, supply-chain ducks line up and the future of the US and UK’s leading bookstore chains hangs in the balance.

Per Publishers Weekly, all categories except adult fiction posted declines, with unit sales of print books fell 6.1% last week from the comparable week in 2021.

The exception was adult fiction that managed to rise 1.4%.

Sales of adult nonfiction fell 7.8%, adult reference fell 18.7%, adult general nonfiction was down 17.3% and adult sales of social situations/family/health was down almost a third, at 28.3%.

Juvenile fiction sales fell 6.6% and within that category, reports PW,  general juvenile fiction was down 9.2%, sales in the social situations/family/health subcategory fell 12% and juvenile nonfiction sales overall were down 10.4%.

Nor is this a one-off, but as the demure headline in PW and the disinclination to acknowledge that this decline is part of a more worrying pattern that continues from Q1 2022 together show, it seems the industry prefers not to look too closely at these repeated declines in sales as the realities of 2022 hit home.

As print sales plummet 20%, industry says print fatigue is to blame

If these were declines in ebooks sales the pundits would be revelling in the news, but these are repeated print declines, after the “best year ever” saga of 2021 that saw this year begin with unjustifiable over-confidence in the industry at unprecedentedly foolhardy levels.

So far publishers are quietly crossing fingers and hoping things don’t continue to deteriorate, but all the signs are things will get continue to go downhill into Q3 and beyond.

Perhaps the man with most cause for concern will be James Daunt, the Atlantic-straddling CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, who will already be having sleepness nights as the post Pandemic, post-Brexit, Ukraine-impacted, supply-chain ducks line up and the future of the US and UK’s leading bookstore chains hangs in the balance.

More on that in a dedicated post after the weekend that will look at how the western publishing industry has been sleepwalking into a hedge fund and stock market owned hen-house of its own making, and where the foxes are awaiting the chickens coming home to roost.