The pie charts demonstrate the proportions of sales for 5 genres of books (adults’ fiction, children’s fiction, biography, travel, others) for one seller from 1972 to 2012.
Overall, in the first 20 years, sales were almost equally spread between the genres, with only slightly larger figures for others in 1972 and adults’ fiction in 1992. Inversely, in the two years, travel books and biography showed the lowest sales respectively. As for 2012, there was a significant disproportion as adult fiction sales underwent a substantial rise at the expense of other genres, except for children’s fiction.
In 1972, audults’ fiction, children’s fiction and biography each made up a fifth of all sales. Meanwhile, other genres constituted a quarter, while travel books were sold less frequently, marking only 15% of sales.
20 years later, adults’ fiction became the most popular type (25%), followed by children’s fiction (22%), others (20%), travel books (18%), and biography (15%).
Finally, in 2012, twice as many books of adults’ fiction were sold as in 1972. Similarly, children’s fiction saw a 3% increase in sales, whereas the rest of the genres dropped by 7-8% each.