Amazon announced that THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy by Suzanne Collins is the US division’s bestselling series ever on all formats, though, as always, no sales figures were provided. (What the release doesn’t note is that those “sales” are likely spurred by Amazon’s decision to offer the Hunger Games to Prime members for free borrowing through the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library.) Earlier in the summer Amazon UK said the 50 SHADES OF GREY trilogy was its bestselling series to date. In other Amazon news, the State Department cancelled a controversial no-bid contract with Amazon pending since last June that would have […]
Sales
Charting the Slowdown In eBook Growth
Further to yesterday’s reporting of AAP monthly sales data for April, we have updated versions of our standing charts of ebook sales patterns. One clear trend is that the days of doubling or more are over; as the ebook sales base rises, the year-over-year growth is moderating. In fact, over the past few months, that growth rate has dropped dramatically. As this tabulation shows, September 2011 was the last time AAP-monitored ebook sales doubled. The growth rate diminished in October, just in time for the biggest quarter of book sales, and held through the post-Christmas ebook spike in January. But […]
Fifty Shades And Lower Returns Bump Up April AAP Numbers, With eBooks At 19.6 Percent Overall Sales
After a flatter overall trade market in March, the AAP numbers for April are the first to reap the benefits of big sales from EL James’ FIFTY SHADES OF GREY TRILOGY, though the numbers have much more to do with cleaner returns (and getting past the Borders bankruptcy) rather than an outright improvement in sales. Net trade sales from reporting publishers totaled $386.4 million for the month, a big $33.8 million ahead of the revised total for April 2011. Net children’s and young adult sales jumped from $97.2 million a year ago to $120.9 million this year. Adult ebook sales […]
eNews: Amazon UK Says Kindle Sales There Surpass Print; AG Asks Court To Declare GBS “Is Not Fair Use”; And More
Amazon UK issued a press release Monday touting the news that ebook sales now outpace all print sales combined, measured across 2012. For every 100 print books sold from Amazon.co.uk (in all formats combined), they’ve sold 114 Kindle editions. As usual, their ratio excludes free Kindle books (but does include very inexpensive ones, and KDP titles). Amazon US passed a similar milestone as of April 1, 2011. They also declare EL James as Amazon UK’s all-time bestselling author, they say, her combined print and Kindle sales eclipsing JK Rowling’s total sales at the site. Amazon UK has sold more than […]
A Closer Look at What BookStats Says About the Trade (It’s Still Flat)
Now that BookStats has released some additional data to their paying subscribers, we’re allowed to provide deeper coverage of our own of their “extrapolations” of revenue shifts across trade publishing. (Our first story is here.) As a standing reminder, we subtract religious book sales of roughly $1.5 billion from the BookStats “trade” data. So all of the data you see below is our own modification and analysis of tables generously provided by BookStats. And this all derives from two relatively simple spreadsheets; the BookStats full annual report and electronic digital dashboard provide a wealth of additional, highly granular data across […]
2011 Trade Sales Fell Slightly In New BookStats Figures, As eBooks Near $2 Billion and Comprise 31 Percent of Adult Fiction
The annual BookStats statistical survey–a joint project between the AAP and the BISG–released a small set of “headline” data on Wednesday, in advance of fuller publication of data to subscribers next week. According to their extrapolations, the overall US publishing business inclusive of all sectors (trade, educational, professional, scholarly, etc.) accounted for $27.2 billion in sales, down roughly 2.5 percent from $27.94 billion in 2010, though unit sales grew by 3.4 percent. For the trade, where we focus our reporting and analysis, they estimate sales of $12.517 billion for 2011, down slightly from estimated sales of $12.59 billion in 2010. […]