As often happens, following positive statistics for July, the AAP’s monthly StatShot report shows declines in August, particularly for adult trade books. Yet again, the final adult trade comparison data from 2018 was revised, so comparisons are difficult. Adult trade sales were $407 million — down from $440 million a year ago (itself a revision…
Industry Statistics
The Deal on Pre-Frankfurt Deals: Flat Volume, with Continued Investment in Nonfiction
Following last week’s preview, we’re back with the final stats and trends on the selling season leading into the Frankfurt Book Fair (measured as five weeks plus a day through Tuesday, for consistency across the years). In line with the early view, total domestic US deal volume was flat for the fifth year in a…
Amazon’s CreateSpace Continues to Devour Self-Published Print Market
Bowker released their statistics charting ISBN-carrying self-published print and ebooks for 2018, showing continued strong growth for CreateSpace, which has eaten nearly the entire, still-expanding market (regulators, take note). CreateSpace issued 1.416 million self-published titles in print-on-demand editions in 2018 — up more than 52 percent from 2017. With that growth, they went from 85…
The Early Frankfurt Dealmaking Preview: Steady Volumes, Fewer Big Deals
It’s one of those rare years in which the Frankfurt Book Fair, starting next Wednesday, will be convened six weeks after Labor Day instead of the usual five weeks (probably due to the late Jewish holidays). While we will share the official stats on the pre-FBF selling season a week from now, that schedule variation…
Remember September: How Did They Pick?
September kicked off the fall selling season with anticipated releases such as Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and the “book club” world was sparked by the announcement of Oprah’s new, more regular bi-monthly book club for Apple TV+. With that in mind, here is our regular look at how the previous month’s high-profile…
AAP Stats Show Good July for Children’s Books
AAP released its July StatShot report, showing reasonable activity for children’s books in particular. As has been the case for much of this year, the final adult trade comparison data from 2018 was revised, so comparisons are difficult. Trade sales were $543.7 million, up from a revised $506.5 million last year (first reported as $528…