• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

September Sales Rose Modestly As eBook Percentage Dropped Again (And K-12 Suffered)

January 25, 2013
By Michael Cader

The AAP released their monthly StatShot report for September 2012, with data from close to 1200 publishers, and as they state, it “reflects the trends we’ve seen all year: continued publishing growth overall with significant increases in children’s/young adult (especially eBook format) and slight erosion in religion publishing.”

For September, however, children’s and YA books fell 4.2 percent (the big growth came earlier in the year) at $145.6 million overall, while net adult book sales of $468.1 million were up 2.8 percent–but that was due to reduced returns rather than higher gross shipments. So for the month, net trade sales of $613.7 million were up 1 percent from a year ago.

Adult hardcovers rose 3 percent, at $179.8 million, while trade paperbacks fell 8.7 percent, to $124.7 million. eBooks were the third-largest segment for adult books, at $103.9–a 30.7 percent increase over $79.6 million a year ago, also consistent with the year’s pattern that has had ebook sales growth slowing down considerably. Children’s ebooks added another $12.9 million, up 44 percent from $8.9 million a year ago.

AAPebookChartSept
More importantly, ebooks were down 11.5 percent compared to the prior month, returning to pre-Fifty Shades levels, the lowest recorded month since April. (Last year, the ebook trough came in October, and then the market rose again.) And ebooks comprised just 19 percent of trade sales for the month–their lowest percentage since December 2011.

There’s also an important statistical variation to remember when looking at the ebook numbers from September forward: Harper switched to post-settlement “agency lite” on September 11, and more so than the other Settlers who changed models later in the year, they boosted their consumer prices. (It seemed, from our random samples at the time, that their prices could have gone up as much as 30 percent.)

AAPmonth2month9
Since AAP StatShot reflects publisher receipts, the ebook numbers will be slightly higher without any change in the market itself. So the 32 percent year-over-year growth for the combined ebook market of $116.8 is overstated relative to unit sales. If we could perform a pricing-model-neutral comparison of September 2012 to September 2011, market growth would be lower still; more on the order of, say, 27 percent.

AAP stats also show just weak the K-12 market has been (a good part of the reason why McGraw-Hill Education sold for a discounted price recently): Those sales were $240 million–42 percent lower than the $412 million recorded a year ago.

Filed Under: eNews, Free, Industry Statistics, Sales

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • How Lester Del Rey "Invented Fantasy Fiction As We Know It" October 2, 2023 Dan Sinykin Excerpt, Slate
  • John Grisham's "Enduring Charm" October 2, 2023 Time
  • Michael Lewis Writes Sam Bankman-Fried "Was Told" Trump Wouid Drop Out of Presidential Race for $5 Billion October 2, 2023 Washington Post
  • If or When Amazon Wants to Identify Books Made By AI, Software Detection Companies Say They Are Ready September 29, 2023 Wired
  • Cundhill History Prize Shortlist Announced September 28, 2023 Prize site
  • Nobel for Literature to be Announced October 5 September 28, 2023 NYT
  • With Sales Down 30% on Book Bans, Levine Querido Authors Raise Over $100,000 In Auction September 27, 2023 PW
  • Taylor & Francis to Make Voluntary Separation Offer; Threatens Layoffs to Follow September 25, 2023 Bookseller
  • Rupert Murdoch to Retire from News Corp and Fox Boards September 21, 2023 NYT
  • OpenAI's New DALL-E3 Lets Artists Opt-Out of Future Training; Rejects Request to Mimic the Style of Living Artists September 20, 2023 TechCrunch
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.