A soft fourth quarter for overall deals (-3.2 percent overall) had only modest effect on what was a record-setting year for PM reports overall in 2024–even with continued weakness in the children’s market. Overall deals were higher than ever, as adult deals set new records by a large margin. And publisher investment, in terms of reported six-figure deals as well as in major and significant deals in particular, well exceeded previous records. In particular: – US deals overall were up 3.5 percent, just beating the previous record set in 2021 when pandemic retail sales also set new records. – Adult Fiction continued […]
Strong Holiday Sales Put Print Units Up for 2024
As we reported a week ago, shoppers turned to books late in the holiday season but with conviction, making print sales for the week ending December 21 the best holiday week of sales recorded by Bookscan over the past five years. That momentum continued into the final few holiday shopping days, with the sales week ending December 28 recording the highest “week 52” sales by far over the past five years. Barnes & Noble ceo James Daunt told the FT, “If you are in the ‘last minute’ game — and we are to an extent — then [ . . .] it was a […]
2024: The Year In Deals
A soft fourth quarter for overall deals (-3.2 percent overall) had only modest effect on what was a record-setting year for PM reports overall in 2024–even with continued weakness in the children’s market. Overall deals were higher than ever, as adult deals set new records by a large margin. And publisher investment, in terms of reported six-figure deals as well as in major and significant deals in particular, well exceeded previous records. In particular: – US deals overall were up 3.5 percent, just beating the previous record set in 2021 when pandemic retail sales also set new records. – Adult Fiction continued […]
Big Final Full Holiday Week Helps Book Sales
After four straight weeks of declining year-over-year book sales, the final full holiday week of sales, for the week ending December 21, was very strong, according to Circana Bookscan. Sales of 33.34 million units were up 4.6 percent over the comparable week from 2023, when consumers bought 31.88 million units — making it the best holiday week of print sales recorded by Bookscan over the past five years. That late surge in book sales also suggests that the final sales week of the year, which will include two more days of holiday sales, could be strong on a comparison basis […]
Publishers Will Print Still More Deluxe Editions in 2025
Publishers will keep producing more deluxe hardcover editions in 2025 with patterned edges, fancy covers, special endpapers and more. For Rebecca Yarros’s ONYX STORM, publishing January 21, Entangled is producing 2 million copies of the deluxe edition and 500,000 copies of the regular version. The publisher tells the NYT they have over one million pre-orders already. Penguin Random House says it plans at least 50 books with decorated edges in 2025, twice as many as they produced in 2024. William Morrow expects to print over 35 deluxe editions, up from 13; and Tor plans at least 45 special productions, up […]
News Updates: Kiran Desai’s Novel, Obama’s Reading, Mel Robbins’ Latest, and A BN Picket
Kiran Desai‘s long-awaited novel THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY will be published on September 23, 2025 by PRH’s Hogarth imprint. The deal for the book was first announced in fall 2010, a year after Desai won the Booker Prize for THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS. At the time, the book was expected for publication in 2013. It was acquired for Knopf, by the late Sonny Mehta and former editorial director Robin Desser. David Ebershoff edited for Hogarth, and the novel weighs in at 656 pages. Separately, former president Barack Obama announced his 10 favorite books of 2024. On Tuesday, December […]