Alongside good closing holiday sales figures from NPD Bookscan, the AAP announced StatShot statistics for November. Trade sales recorded another record high, at $924 million — up $58 million, or 6.7 percent, from 2020, and well above the strong $883 million recorded in November 2018. Adult sales registered $632 million (up $32 million) and children’s and YA sales reached $292 million (up $26 million). Digital audio gained 21 percent, to $64 million (up $11 million), and ebook sales rose 6 percent, to $88 million (up $5 million). Through 11 months AAP trade sales total $8.099 billion — already ahead of […]
Industry Statistics
Strong Closing Week Leaves Holiday Sales Even with 2020
A good final sales week, ending on December 25 — with one extra shopping day compared to the same week in 2020 — put print sales for the four final holiday weeks as measured by NPD Bookscan just about even with 2020. At just under 110 million units, 2021’s total was less than a million units behind last year’s sales. That strong finale leaves 2021 sales running 8.9 percent ahead of last year’s print sales, pointed towards another year of robust sales for print books. After 51 weeks, Bookscan counts print sales of 810 million units — compared to 744 […]
Good October Continues Great Year for Trade Publishers
The AAP reported their monthly StatShot statistics for October from participating publishers, recording another strong month as retailers stocked up for the holidays ahead of expected supply chain issues. Trade publishing sales were $1.042 billion — what we believe is the first time AAP-monitored sales have ever topped $1 billion in a single month — up $143.5 million, or 16 percent higher than a year ago. Adult sales of $712 million were up $104 million, with hardcovers growing by 14.5 percent (up $41 million) and trade paperbacks rising a big 35 percent (up $49.5 million). Children’s and YA sales of […]
Expanding The Known World with AAP’s New Annual Statistics
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 […]
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 […]