After two strong months of sales reports, the AAP numbers for March show a flatter overall trade market, with children’s sales (powered by the Hunger Games) registering big gains that almost kept pace with the decline in adult sales (which do not incorporate the 50 Shades phenomenon yet). Net trade sales from reporting publishers totaled $477.5 million for the month, $200,000 ahead of the revised total for March 2011. Net children’s and young adult sales jumped from $95.9 million a year ago to $140 million this year. eBook sales seem to be following their pattern of peaking at the beginning […]
Sales
Ingram Shows What’s Selling Well At Indie Stores; Codex Addresses the “Discovery Gap”
Last Monday’s Publishers Launch BEA conference was a packed day of data, insights and news (like the announcement of Tor’s DRM-free ebookstore) worth sharing, and now we have a chance to catch up a bit. At the PLC site we have posted slides from five of the presentations so far, open to all, and we’ll have some audio on the way later as well. One presentation of widespread interest was Ingram chief content officer Phil Ollila‘s new data–commissioned by Publishers Launch–analyzing how the rise of ebooks affects what is sold in physical bookstores. Ollila’s primary focus was to identify opportunities […]
eBooks Grow to Comprise 6 Percent of Export Sales
As part of their expanding BookStats project, the AAP is now breaking out some meaningful export sales data for the first time. Many US publishers have known that export is the prime growth areas and have been devoting resources towards maximizing the opportunity. The interesting insight is that, while digital clearly cannibalizes print sales in the US, it’s fueling both print and ebook sales in export markets. From 161 reporting publishers, print export sales in 2011 were $335.9 million, and ebook sales into the same territories were $21.5 million (or 6 percent of all export sales). Significantly the biggest “export” […]
eNews: Warner Bros. Scripts Turned Into eBooks; DemiBooks’ New Children’s Appstore; and More
Warner Bros. announced it would sell four of the movie studio’s classic scripts — CASABLANCA, BEN-HUR, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST — as enhanced ebooks for Kindle, Nook, and iPad. It’s the first part of a large-scale initiative in which they hope to turn hundreds of scripts into ebooks. The WSJ reports each title will retail for $10 and “includes the film’s actual shooting script and rare historical documents from the Warner Bros. archives.” President of Warner Bros. digital distribution Thomas Gewecke told the paper the company “had been looking at a variety of ideas to leverage […]
eBook Sales Climb Again in AAP December Stats; Comprise 18.6 Percent of 2011 Sales
The AAP reported sales for December, with net trade shipments of $493 million down 3.5 percent from a year ago. Children’s/YA hardcover was the only print growth category for the month, up 12.3 percent, and per the year’s trend, mass market books declined the most, down 40 percent. eBook sales remained moderate, at $85 million the third-largest category after adult hardcover and adult paperback. Comprising 17.2 percent of overall trade sales, they did climb from $77.3 million in November though on a comparable basis, ebooks less than doubled compared to the same period a year ago (when they were $49.4 […]
eNews: BN Makes Progress In Nook Patent Lawsuit Against Chipmaker; eSales Figures From McAfee, Wilkinson; And More
As part of a separate lawsuit in which Barnes & Noble pre-emptively sued chipmaker LSI to mitigate against accusations that the Nook e-reader line infringed on the company’s patents, Judge Edward Chen of California’s Northern District denied LSI’s motions to dismiss 8 of BN’s defenses, including “non-infringement, invalidity, unenforceability, persecution history estoppel/judicial estoppel, no injunctive relief, license and failure to state a claim.” Chen said BN “had adequately pleaded factual allegations of misconduct by Lucent, LSI’s predecessor, which included failure to disclose rules of standard-setting organizations” and that the conduct could fall under the grounds of unforceability. “Indeed, a contrary […]