The AAP is still catching up on their monthly sales numbers and just released their statistics for July. (To repeat last month’s reminder, this is the data from the limited set of publishers who reported monthly to the AAP, not to be confused with the larger pool of annual data and estimates reflected in the new Book Stats program the publishers organization runs along with the BISG, which debuted in August).
After June’s pronounced declines in adult hardcover and trade paperback sales compared to a year ago, the July numbers show a rebound, at least for adult hardcovers. Net sales of $91.2 million were up–both from the $68.1 million recorded a year ago, as well as from June’s hardcover tally of $84.9 million. Adult trade paperback sales remained weak compared to 2010 at $77.5 million (versus $109.4 million a year ago), though again were an improvement from a mere $48.4 million last month.
eBook sales from the 15 reporting publishers were $82.6 million in July, making it the second-largest category after adult hardcovers. That’s only about double the total recorded last July, and is up just slightly from June’s ebook report of $80.2 million. In all, ebooks comprised 20.6% of trade sales for the month. Though less affected by the growth in ebooks, children’s publishing suffers from the liquidation of Borders, with sales down close to 20 percent versus a year ago, and also down over 9 percent versus last month.
Total trade sales of $389.2 million for July were just about even with $391 million from a year ago, and gained 7 percent versus June, which can be considered good news.