The three pie charts compare percentages of five different categories of book sold from 1972 to 2012.
Overall, the proportions of adult and children’s fiction books increased throughout the period, while biography and books named others declined. By 2012, adult fiction accounted for the largest proportion of the total.
In 1972, the others category made up 25%, which was higher than that of adult fiction, children’s fiction, and biography that each had a share of 20%. However, the next two decades, the figures for fiction for both adults and pupils saw an increase by 5% and 2% percentage points, respectively. By contrast, the proportions of biography and other categories declined by 5 per cent.
By the end of the period, the percentage of adult fiction sold experienced a significant rise to 45%, representing nearly half of all books. Similarly, the second most sold were children’s fiction with 25%. The other remaining types of books, namely, others and biography, fell to 12% and 8%, respectively. A different trend can be seen for travel books, which fluctuated during the period and stood at 15% in 1972 and ended at 10%.