The AAP released a revamped version of their StatShot Annual Report on Friday, which features a surprise gift to everyone who values actual data about the book business. After years of presenting only “modeled” (or, in our view, more like “mottled”) charts that aim to guesstimate information about the entire bookselling landscape that is never actually reported or verified, the organization is now also “showing their work,” presenting a meaningfully-enhanced section of directly collected actual data. There are nine glorious pages of “Direct Data” in all, including a number of tables focused on trade publishing in particular. As another part […]
Industry Statistics
Third Quarter Deal Trends
Next week we will report on dealmaking in the six-week “pre-Frankfurt” window, but first we present the next installment in this year’s new look at quarterly deal trends. The first half of 2021 saw a marked surge in dealmaking, in line with record increases in consumer book sales: First quarter 2021 US deal volume was 19 percent higher than in 2020, and second quarter deal volume remained 18 percent higher than the same quarter the previous year. Those increases in deal volume tracked very closely with Bookscan print unit data, which showed sales at measured outlets up 18.4 percent in […]
Bookselling Math
Barnes & Noble ceo James Daunt told PW that the chain’s sales are “up about 5% to 6% so far this year, compared to 2019, with book sales up by double digits.” To put that in context, given BN’s long steady decline prior to Daunt’s tenure, sales look to have come back to a point slightly ahead of where they were in 2018, and still well below the levels in 2017 and 2016. That recovery has also lagged the overall market, as the pandemic lifted online book sales and hurt physical outlets. When BN was publicly traded their reporting periods […]
AAP Sales Confirm Softer June, But Strong First Half
The AAP released their monthly StatShot data for June, along with sub-totals for the first half of 2021, confirming other industry statistics that showed moderating but still robust sales in June after a very strong start to the year. For June, AAP adult trade sales of $411 million were $43 million below June 2020, or 10.8 percent lower — but well ahead of $379 million from June 2019, and ahead of the three-year average of $399 million from 2016 through 2018. Similarly, children’s and YA sales of $183.5 million were $8 million lower than June 2020, off 9 percent — […]
AAP May Stats Are A Split Screen
The AAP released their StatShot report for publisher-reported May sales with print book shipments remaining strong — and adult sales in particular — even as consumer sales reflected some falling back to earth with more moderate growth in digital audio and a drop in ebook sales. Total trade sales of $633 million were still up $53 million (or 9.1 percent) compared to $580 million in 2020 — but that was when the business was still grappling with the early stages of the pandemic, and before the June burst in sales of books by Black authors that helped lead the year’s […]
Second Quarter Deals Remain Very Strong
HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray told an investor conference in June that the publisher is, “Being aggressive in terms of buying books. We’ve seen the book pie grow, maybe 15 percent. And so our response, which is part opportunistic and part defensive, is to be aggressive in buying right now.” Our exclusive analysis of deal transactions in the second quarter of 2021 confirms that behavior, across the industry. In the first quarter, US deal volume was 19 percent higher than a year ago (and 21 percent higher than the recent four-year average). For the second quarter, deal volume again registered 18 […]