The AAP released its August StatShot showing combined adult and children net trade sales of $648 million, up $46 million from last year. However, publishers didn’t ship many more books than they did last year in August; the gains persist because returns have been consistently lower this year. Shipments totaled $744 million, up just $5 million from last year, with returns (30) percent lower. Adult trade sales had another good month, $53 million higher at $453 million, up $52 million from last year. But children’s sales declined, falling $8 million to $194 million — with the total of $647 million […]
Industry Statistics
Fall Dealmaking Shows Strong Start
With the Frankfurt Book Fair cancelled, we are taking a preliminary look at the big fall “dealmaking season” a full three weeks after Labor Day. (Ordinarily, we chart pre-FBF deal trends according to the five-plus weeks between Labor Day and the Tuesday before the Fair.) So far, the market for new deals is looking strong in a number of ways, in line with healthy print book sales in recent weeks, and financial reports showing trade publishers managing reasonably well during the pandemic and improving their performance during the summer. Of course it’s too early to know if dealmakers have simply […]
Macmillan Will Raise Starting Salaries to $42K
Macmillan announced Thursday that the entry salary level in the US will be raised to $42,000, effective December 27. As part of the initiative, new ceo Don Weisberg said, current employees below that level will get a raise as well. “In addition to the benefit this provides to existing employees,” Weisberg said, “we expect this change will help us expand our applicant pool by attracting candidates who have, up to now, found our starting salary too low. This increase is part of Macmillan’s broader D&I objectives and our commitment to pay equity.” The company told us, “Salaries will also be […]
More Data for More People
For over a year now we have offered agents and authors the ability to follow actual NPD Bookscan weekly sales reports for up to 5 ISBNs, through a monthly “data package” upgrade — at the lowest price ever provided for this kind of data access. Now we are able to provide this package to an expanded universe that covers most PublishersMarketplace.com members except for publishers (whom NPD services directly). Eligible PM members now include agents, authors, editorial services providers, film/tv people, independent publicists, packagers, and scouts. Meanwhile, NPD launched a new version of the Bookscan platform earlier this year that […]
More Pub Date Delays
Every week we monitor pub date changes on our lists of notable forthcoming books (following roughly 150 books a month). Further to Friday’s piece on printing issues and a wave of pub date changes from Penguin Random House imprints in particular due to limited capacity, a few additional postponements have appeared in the metadata: Nonfiction by Wesley Morgan (Random House, now March 2021) and Milo Beckman (Dutton, now December 2020) moved, as did Victoria Thompson’s novel (Berkley, now January). We also noted at least eight pub date changes from Simon & Schuster imprints, all moving forward by just two to […]
A Big Surge In Publisher-Reported Sales for June Put “Covid Quarter” In Positive Territory
The AAP released their StatShot report for June, which shows a big month lifting trade sales — making up for the declines registered in April and May and putting reported sales up modestly for the “Covid quarter.” June stats were likely lifted by a combination of stores reopening and replenishing inventory, big releases such as John Bolton’s memoir, and the surge in interest in books by Black authors. Additionally, digital sales remained high in the month, even as print orders rebounded. While April and May stats showed much lower gross shipments to stores as well as significantly lower returns, the […]