2025 Overall Book Sales Data

The last piece of the puzzle for me to craft my annual year in review program is now available. (Click here for a description via CA Library Learning but check your system's access to PCI Webinars.)

And that piece is the year end print book sales report. Click here to see the full list via Publishers Weekly. Please note, this is all print sales in one list with number of units sold. It is VERY important for us to see this data so that we understand exactly what sells regardless of where we would shelve it in the library.

If you subscribe to the Book Riot Newsletter you would have also received this in your inbox, breaking down the PW data:

Print book sales held steady in 2025

After peaking in 2021 with 839.7 million copies sold, print sales seem to have settled in at a new post-pandemic normal. Publishers Weekly reports total unit sales of 762.4 million in 2025, which is 0.3% higher than in 2024 but more than 9% lower than the 2021 high.

Mel Robbins’s self-help juggernaut The Let Them Theory topped charts with more than 2.8 million copies sold, followed closely by Rebecca Yarros, whose Onyx Storm moved a combined total of more than 2.7 million units across two editions, and Suzanne Collins’s latest Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping , which notched just over 2 million.

Other notable data:

👑 BookTok fave Freida McFadden takes home the crown for Most Popular, with three unique titles among the year’s top 20 bestsellers 👧 8 of the 20 bestselling titles are kids’ books 🐻 The oldest book to hit the top 20: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, originally published in 1967 💸 Bank on The Nightingale. Kristin Hannah’s four-quadrant hit, which hit shelves a full decade ago, sold nearly half-a-million copies. Also notable, though sadly unsurprising, is the utter lack of diversity among the year’s top sellers. Indeed, the last time an author of color appeared among the 20 best-selling titles of the year was 2022 (Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry). I will be using this list of bestselling books and comparing it to top library checkouts and best lists as part of my Year in Review program. Again those slides will be available to all on February 11th, but check with your library systems learning platforms to see if you will have access. I trained CT libraries yesterday and they get access. It means our 4 month contract comes with a 5th bonus trading.  One last book sales fact that PW noticed which I saved as part of my year in review resources, Bible Sale broke record sin the US and UK. Click here for the article about it. I am not sure how this will factor into my program yet, but it is definitely worth noting. More on all of this soon as I will begin building the presentation this week.