Following a strong final pre-Christmas sales week, as we reported over the holiday break, Circana Bookscan’s week 52 of 2023 print sales was about 400,000 units below the comparable week from a year ago. Better-than-expected print book sales for November and December left 2023’s total units just 2.58 percent below 2022 — at 767 million units, versus 788 million units a year ago. That puts 2023 modestly above 757 million units in 2020 and well ahead of 2019’s 697 million units from the “before times.”
Archives for January 2024
Obituary: Matthew Flamm
Poet and reporter Matthew Flamm, 70, died on January 2 of brain cancer. From 2004 until his retirement in 2020, Flamm was a reporter at Crain’s New York Business. He previously wrote for the New York Post and New York Observer. His poetry appeared in the New Yorker, and his poetry collection GRIEVING FOR BEGINNERS was self-published last year.
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Our Next Buzz Books Editors and Authors Panel
We are open for registration for our next virtual Buzz Books Editors and Authors Panel, Wednesday, January 24th at 7 PM Eastern. As always, we are honored to have the American Booksellers Association join us as co-presenter, with Leigh Haber hosting. You can register here—and the first 25 booksellers who enroll will get a package of galleys for the featured titles. On January 16th, a week ahead of the panel, we’ll release the next packed edition of our popular digital sampler, Buzz Books 2024: Spring/Summer, with substantial excerpts from all of the Editors Panel books, along with dozens of other not-yet-published breakout titles. […]
Fourth Quarter Deals: Fiction Rises, Nonfiction and Children’s Declines
Today we report on dealmaking statistics for both the fourth quarter of 2023 as well as the full year — which means that most of our focus is on the annual trends. To recap: Q1 deals were weak — due in large part to the strike at Harper Collins and continued conservatism at Penguin Random House — and then sales rebounded in Q2, helped by later dates for the book fairs, with particular strength in the bigger six-figure deals. Q3 deals declined again, even as major deal reports hit record levels. Fourth quarter deals continued to paint multiple pictures. Adult […]
2023: The Year In Deals
Today we report both fourth quarter and full-year 2023 statistics for US deal reports. Dealmaking patterns were somewhat in line with sales in 2022, as most key domestic deal statistics ebbed from record levels in 2021 but still held at high levels relative to previous years. Things did soften after a strong first quarter, and then picked up a bit in the fourth quarter. In particular: – US deals finished down by 2.7 percent — like print sales as measured by Circana Bookscan, the third-best year in recent charting, and well ahead of 2020 and earlier years. – Adult Fiction continued its […]