Many in the trade were feeling relatively positive about business trends at the end of the year until the Borders news broke. For the 51 weeks of book sales, through Sunday, December 26, print book sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan were down 4.4 percent overall. (The comparable reporting period from 2009 ran through December 27.) With ebook sales at the major reporting houses rising from roughly 3 percent a year ago to approximately 9 percent or more in dollars (and likely even more by units) by the end of this year it’s likely that the decline in print sales […]
