The AAP reported December 2019 sales and released their full totals for 2019 sales, along with final numbers for 2018. Though the historical baseline was revised lower for much of the year for adult sales, the final totals wind up matching the report from a year ago almost exactly. The organization’s pool of reporting publishers recorded 2019 trade sales that were almost exactly flat, registering $7.249 billion in 2019, versus $7.245 billion in 2018. (For comparison, AAP-reported trade sales were $6.926 billion in 2017, and $7.006 billion in 2016.) Adult sales fell $139 million in 2019, down 1.9 percent, while […]
Industry Statistics
The Fair Is Cancelled But Pre-London Dealmaking Has Been Steady, If Modest In Investment
As regular readers know, we chart the domestic dealmaking data ahead of both the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs. Ordinarily we would provide a first look this Friday and then follow up next Wednesday, but with the cancellation of LBF, we wanted to see how the dealmaking trends have been lining up. The good news is that deal volumes are looking strong overall, only 5.5 percent below last year’s final pre-London total, so likely to finish well ahead of last year. Fiction deals have already rebounded, running 8.6 percent ahead of last year’s final total. And debut fiction deals are […]
AAP November 2019 Stats Show Weak Sales
As we explain regularly, AAP StatShot data can vary widely from month to month (and that does not seem to be an indicator of anything significant). And we already know how 2019 trade print sales turned out from a unit perspective from NPD Bookscan. With all of that in mind, the AAP November 2019 data is markedly lower for both adult and children’s trade books, only in part owing to a particularly strong comp year. Adult print sales totaled $304 million, compared to $466 million in November 2018. (November 2018’s updated reporting was only slightly lower than the $473 million […]
2019 Diversity Study Offers a More Comprehensive Baseline
The 2019 Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey results are in, and “the field is just as White today as it was four years ago,” write Jason Low and Hannah Ehrlich in their analysis of the data. But that data pool itself presents a much broader, richer understanding of who works in publishing than their first landmark effort from 2015. Through expansive outreach by Lee & Low, the new survey garnered over twice as many responses (7,893 responses in 2019, versus 3,706 in 2015), across 153 companies, this time including university presses and literary agencies, too, along with all of […]
2019’s Book Club Picks, Part Two: How Did the Booksellers Pick?
As promised, this is the second part of the in-depth look we started yesterday, tracking the performance of well-known monthly book club and spotlight picks. This installment focuses on selections from booksellers and librarians, who generally highlight new release titles, as they should. In some cases that helps their sales track record, since they often pick anticipated and pre-ordered books from commercial authors or titles that come with a big publisher promotional push. On the other hand, sometimes those titles publish late in the month, so our window on sales does not always include four weeks worth of data. (In […]
2019’s Book Club Books: How Did the Pickers Pick?
The burst in attention and impact for book clubs and monthly spotlight picks among booksellers, celebrities, and media outlets prompted our popular monthly “How Did They Pick?” feature, which tracks print sales of selected titles. Over time, that sales data has shown that not all picks are created equal; some are aggressively marketed commercial hits, while others are quiet releases and sell fewer than 1,000 copies in their selection month. The sales impact from club to club varies widely as well. Below we have charted each club’s most and least resonant picks of 2019, and we show you their average […]