These Book Genres Are Trending

Nielsen Bookscan collects book sales numbers from outlets and compiles them into statistics that give us a view what kind of books have been popular lately. If we take last year’s sales numbers and compare them with 2013 numbers, we can find out which genres were trending in 2014.

In 2014 in the US, three best-selling nonfiction book genres were religion, reference and general nonfiction.

Three trending genres in 2014 were self-help (+15% from 2013), biographies (+12%) and religion (+12%).

Three genres that were losing readers were humor (-13% from 2013), computers (-12%) and history/law/politics (-11%).

Here are the numbers (units in thousands).

  2013 2014 % CHANGE
Adult Nonfiction
Religion/Bibles 32,012 35798 12%
Reference 32,642 31989 -2%
General Nonfiction 29,509 28533 -3%
Biography/Autobiography/Memoir 20,425 22803 12%
Health/Fitness/Medicine/Sports 22,488 21574 -4%
Business/Economics 15,473 16604 7%
Cooking/Entertaining 15,363 15492 1%
History/Law/Political Science 17,080 15220 -11%
Self-Help 8,546 9848 15%
Crafts/Hobbies/Antiques/Games 8,314 8485 2%
Performing Arts 7,358 7706 5%
Travel 7,658 7417 -3%
Art/Architecture/Design/Photography 6,739 6984 4%
Humor 5,604 4897 -13%
Computers 5,311 4652 -12%
House & Home/Gardening 2,309 2130 -8%
Total Adult Nonfiction 236,833 240,130 1%
Adult Fiction
General Fiction 36,314 33524 -8%
Romance 34,585 30885 -11%
Suspense/Thrillers 22,161 20111 -9%
Mystery/Detective 14,884 14304 -4%
Graphic Novels 7,659 8669 13%
Classics 7,817 7578 -3%
Fantasy 8,615 7526 -13%
Religion 4,925 4174 -15%
Science Fiction 4,448 4142 -7%
Occult/Psychological/Horror 4,474 3329 -26%
Action/Adventure 2,619 2239 -15%
Western 2,088 2232 7%
Total Adult Fiction 150,590 138,712 -8%

 

Fiction books lost a lot of readers during 2014. All fiction genres, except for graphic novels and westerns sold fewer books in 2014 than in 2013.

Publishers Weekly reported.