An exceptional start to the year for Irish book sales, revealed by Nielson Book
via Nielson Book
The Irish Consumer Market (ICM) has seen sales to 27 February of €18.8m (+9.4% on 2020) and 1.6m books (+10.4%), with value for the first two months of the year behind only 2008 to 2010, and volume behind 2008 to 2011.
As shown below, the first couple of weeks in the year did lag behind, but four weeks since then have shown double-digit percent growth against 2020. All broad sectors are contributing to that impressive performance, with Non-Fiction posting the strongest growth, up 16.0% across both measures to 680.6k books, earning €10.3m.
Fiction has seen more moderate gains, with volume up 6.9% to 406.6k and value up 3.9% to €4.4m. Children’s has increased by a similar figure in volume sales (+6.6% to 474.6k) with a lower value growth (+1.2% to €4.0m) but as with last year, decline in educational books has had a strong effect on the overall Children’s sector stats. Removing School Textbooks & Study Guidesbrings Children’s volume to +14.0% and value to +8.8%.
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse and Pinch of Nom Quick & Easy also lead the chart in Ireland, although they’ve swapped places compared to the UK. While cookbooks aren’t as dominant at the top of the Irish chart as in the UK right now, The Daly Dish by Gina & Karol Daly does feature at tenth for the year so far. Where the Crawdads Sing has remained the Fiction bestseller after leading the chart in 2020, and it’s actually the only novel within the top five; the next one down is The Thursday Murder Club at ninth. That’s quite a change from this time last year, when four of the top five were Fiction.
Personal Development books close out the bestsellers, with Eoin McGee’s How to Be Good With Money within 1,000 copies of its full 2020 sales after only eight weeks in 2021, and Good Vibes, Good Life by Vex King experiencing its highest weekly sales yet in Ireland over the past two months. Just outside the top five, Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Gift by Edith Eger continue the Personal Development trend at sixth and seventh respectively, with Edith Eger’s first book The Choice also making the top ten.
For Irish bestseller charts for February, see here
