September kicked off the fall selling season with anticipated releases such as Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and the “book club” world was sparked by the announcement of Oprah’s new, more regular bi-monthly book club for Apple TV+. With that in mind, here is our regular look at how the previous month’s high-profile retailer and book club picks fared in the marketplace. (The standing reminder: These statistics are only a partial view, of print sales only. Some of these books were highly anticipated — and well pre-ordered — long before any of these selections were announced. And we […]
Industry Statistics
AAP Stats Show Good July for Children’s Books
AAP released its July StatShot report, showing reasonable activity for children’s books in particular. As has been the case for much of this year, the final adult trade comparison data from 2018 was revised, so comparisons are difficult. Trade sales were $543.7 million, up from a revised $506.5 million last year (first reported as $528 million), and ahead of the four-year average of $529.5 million. Adult trade sales for July 2019 were $384 million — which is better than the final count of $369.6 million for July 2018, but behind the originally-reported $389.2 million. Children’s trade sales were up by […]
Remember August: How Did They Pick?
Continuing our popular new feature, here is our regular look at how previous month’s high-profile retailer and book club picks fared in the marketplace. (The standing reminder: These statistics are only a partial view, of print sales only. Some of these books were highly anticipated — and well pre-ordered — long before any of these selections were announced. And we know from experience and previous analyses that Reese Witherspoon’s picks will overweight significantly for increased digital audio sales rather than print sales, thanks to her close commercial partnership with Audible.) But over time we expect to see some interesting patterns […]
Trade Sales Are Decent At Halfway Mark, with Gains in Children’s/Young Adult
The AAP released monthly StatShot data for both May and June on Wednesday. As we have been explaining, you can’t really make comparisons to the previous year, since the final 2018 baseline data for adult trade sales has been lowered month after month. (It appears that some sales were shifted from adult trade to their religious presses category — where 2018 sales through June were revised upwards by $80 million, or a big 37 percent. But adult trade sales for 2018 have been lowered more than that.) This happened a year ago, too, when first half-year adult trade sales for […]
Remember July: How Did They Pick?
Our first little experiment last month proved to be popular, so we’ll continue our monthly recaps of how the previous month’s high-profile retailer and book club picks fared in the marketplace. (Of course these statistics are only a partial view, of print sales only. Some of these books were highly anticipated — and well pre-ordered — long before any of these selections were announced. And we know from experience and previous analyses that Reese Witherspoon’s picks will overweight significantly for increased digital audio sales rather than print sales, thanks to her close commercial partnership with Audible.) But over time we […]
Jenna Bush’s Today Picks Have Some Power
EW probably goes overboard in declaring Jenna Bush Hager as “demonstrating an individual power not seen since Oprah’s glory days” in her monthly book picks on The Today Show, starting in March. But her selections do have noticeable impact, and provide a clear sales lift. Her inaugural pick was her strongest, however; according to NPD Bookscan, here is how Jenna’s picks have sold in the four weeks of her selection: March: The Last Romantics, Tara Conklin (22,950 copies) April: The Unwinding of the Miracle, Julie Yip-Williams (7,800 copies) May: A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Rum (10,750 copies) June: Searching […]