The pie charts below show the proportions of five types of books sold by a bookstore in 1972, 1992 and 2012. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The three pie charts illustrate how the share of sales held by five categories of books at one bookstore changed in 1972, 1992 and 2012.

Overall

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, it is clear from the data that fiction dominated throughout the forty years,

although

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its lead narrowed steadily. Children's titles and self-help books gained ground considerably, but reference material declined to a tiny fraction of the total, and biographies remained relatively stable. In 1972, novels accounted for exactly half of everything sold,

whereas

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reference works constituted a distant second at 20 per cent, which was hardly surprising because

such

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volumes were

then

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the only way to look things up at home. The remaining three categories made up far smaller proportions, with biographies holding 15, children's literature contributing 10, and personal development guides comprising a mere 5. By 1992, the picture had begun to shift. Fiction slipped to 42, and the second group fell to 12,

while

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the youth segment doubled to 20 and self-help rose to 11. Two decades later, in 2012, these trends had intensified: novels represented just over a third of sales, titles for young readers had climbed to 25 per cent, and the self-improvement category had expanded to 18, overtaking life stories for the first time. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias,

however

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, had collapsed to only 4.

Consequently

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, if

this

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pattern continued, they would soon disappear from the shelves altogether.