We don’t put a lot of stock into the AAP’s sales estimates (a hybrid of Census data and reports from 86 AAP member publishers, both of which are incomplete data streams). But for those who like to follow them, today the organization published its 2009 sales estimates.
Trade sales of $8.1 billion were “steady,” with adult hardcover rising 6.9 percent and adult paperbacks falling 5.2 percent. Mass market paperbacks totaled $1 billion, down 4 percent. By their count, ebook sales of $313 million–up 176 percent–overtook audio sales, which at $192 million were down 12.9 percent.
Religious book sales fell 9 percent to $659 million; K-12 fell 13.8 percent at $5.2 billion, as higher ed rose 12.9 percent of $4.3 billion.
In the UK, an analysis of Nielsen BookScan sales for the first quarter of 2010 in the Bookseller says that sales were at their lowest point for the period since 2006, down 5.9 percent against the previous year. Sales did improve in March, and they found that adult nonfiction was much softer than fiction and children’s sales.