US sees super sales for Seuss

07.03.14 | John Lewis - The Bookseller

Children's books dominated the USA top 10 last week, driven by the annual Read Across America Day which celebrates Dr Seuss, and continued success of Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy.

Dr Seuss had four of the Nielsen BookScan US top 10 in the week ending 3rd March, including number one Green Eggs and Ham (Random House Children's Books, 56,678 units), a title which was originally published in 1960. The other Seuss titles in the top 10 were One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (47,907 units, second place),  The Cat in the Hat (37,603, fourth) and Fox in Socks (28,140, ninth).  

Read Across America Day is a literacy initiative based around Dr Seuss—who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on 2nd March 1904—and celebrated on the school day closest to the anniversary of his birth. Organisers the National Education Association said around 45 million people participated in Seuss events across the country for the 2014 edition.

Combined Seuss sales in the top 100 last week were 487,559 copies, up 125% on the previous week. Random House has already sold in excess of one million Seuss books in the US this year through BookScan.

Roth, meanwhile, who had the previous week's number one with Divergent (Katherine Tegan), saw that book slip to number three, yet it still had a week on week sales increase of 15%, shifting a 47,850 copies. The other titles in the series, Insurgent and Allegiant also saw double digit sales increases, and were sixth and tenth in the overall chart, respectively.

Roth has sold just under 910,000 physical books so far this year in the US And this is even before the release of first film adaption on which opens nationwide in the US on 21st March. The film is scheduled for release in the UK on 4th April. Roth has sold just under 203, 000 copies of her books across all formats and editions in the UK.

The highest fiction new entry in the US top 100 is Robyn Carr's latest Thunder Point novel, The Chance (Mira Books) at number five with 33,851 units sold. The previous book in the series, The Hero, has sold 160, 805 copies in the US.  

Volume grew week on week by 5%, driven by a 13% increase in overall Juvenile book sales with Juvenile Fiction growing 15%.  Total volume sales were 11,306, 000 units.