The bar chart illustrates the number of sales (in millions of dollars) for five types of fiction books—young adult, classics, mystery, romance, and science fiction & fantasy—over a five-year period.
Overall, the sales of all book categories experienced fluctuations throughout the period. Romance and mystery books were consistently more popular than the other genres, while science fiction & fantasy remained the least popular.
In 2006, romance books had the highest sales, at around $82 million, which rose sharply to $120 million in 2007. However, this figure dropped significantly to approximately $70 million in 2008 before recovering steadily, reaching over $80 million by 2010. Mystery books followed a similar pattern: starting at just over $60 million in 2006, peaking above $80 million in 2007, then declining to around $50 million in 2008 and maintaining that level through to 2010.
Science fiction and fantasy books had the lowest sales throughout the period, remaining below $20 million. Classics and young adult books showed similar sales figures between 2007 and 2009, though young adult books were noticeably more popular in both 2006 and 2010, with roughly twice the sales of classics in those years.