AAP released its monthly StatShot for September, showing small gains in both adult and children’s books, based on data from 1,362 publishers. However, the adult sales figures from last year’s report were revised once again, making comparison less valuable. On balance, adult sales were about $6.5 million below the recent four-year average, and children’s sales were almost $14 million above the recent three-year average. Total adult trade sales for September were $479.3 million, compared to a final figure of $463.1 million for last September. But a year ago, September adult sales were initially reported to be $482 million. As has […]
Industry Statistics
Remember October: How Did They Pick?
The October picks were unusual for a number of reasons. Oprah’s new, more regular bi-monthly book club for Apple TV+ was the biggest outlier. Officially launching today, the “November selection” was announced September 23 and you could see the lift in the opening week of sales for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s novel. At the lower end of the commercial scale, Good Morning America followed the considerable success of their rivals at the Today Show with their own book club — announced quite modestly October 9, with little commercial response so far. Jenna Bush Hager, on the other hand, selected a book that […]
AAP Trade Stats Decline In August, with Big Drop In Higher Ed
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 downward from the $459 million originally reported for August 2018). Children’s sales filled some of the gap, at $197 million, up from $183 million a year ago. The total of $604 million was more in line with figures from August 2017 ($608 million) and August […]
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 row. As we reported last week, the FBF selling season is about 7.5 percent busier than the springtime selling season ahead of the London Book Fair. That means the FBF stretch averages 140 deals a week and the London season averages 130 deals a week […]
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 percent of the market in 2017 to 91.5 percent share in 2018. As we have noted previously, Bowker does not have counts for the Ingram Spark program, since Ingram directs customers to register for their own ISBNs directly. That’s likely included in the miscellaneous “small […]
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 means we do already have a full sample data set of five weeks and a day for early comparison, which is our usual standard. From what we see in the current data, total pre-Frankfurt domestic deal volume looks to be just about flat again this […]