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 […]
Industry Statistics
AAP Releases Annual “Estimates”
The AAP released their separate set of annual “estimates” — StatShot Annual — on Friday. As usual, the most important thing for us to cover here is to remind you that, in contrast to the AAP’s monthly reports, these “estimates” are the product of taking real data and then multiplying it to pretend to account for the parts of the publishing industry that never report their numbers. The methodology has never stood up to scrutiny or logic, so we find the estimates of little value. Which is a shame, because the data collected is much more detailed and granular than […]
First Quarter AAP Sales Are Ahead of Recent Average, Clouded By Continuing Restatements
The AAP reported monthly StatShot statistics for March and, as with the first two reports of 2019, the news is not what you will read elsewhere. The remarkable finding continues to be a significant restatement of adult sales for the previous year, with early 2018 weaker than previously shown. Once again, the tabulation of adult sales for March 2018 fell $30 million in the AAP’s final count — following a $33.5 million reduction for February, and a $36 million downward revision in for January. (The AAP has told us to expect another reduce restatement for April as well.) This matters […]
The New AAP Reporting Pool Looks to be Smaller, But February Statistics Show A Gain
The AAP continues with their program of much more timely release of the monthly StatShot statistics, publishing the February 2019 report. Unfortunately, as we suggested in reporting on the January data, asserting any meaningful comparisons has become more dubious still — particularly for adult books — given the large changes in the pool of reporting publishers. A year ago, adult trade sales for February were reported as $334 million, a gain over $301 million in 2017. But this year, the final re-reported version of the February 2018 adult trade data (reflecting historical data from the new pool of contributing publishers) […]
AAP’s January StatShot Shows 7 Percent Decline in Adult Trade
The AAP released their StatShot publisher-reported monthly sales statistics for January. As we have explained before, the statistics for any given month turn out to have little or no statistical significance, particular for the print categories. The current report has adult trade sales at $352.5 in January 2019 (down 7 percent from $380 million last January), with hardcover sales 10 percent lower and mass market sales 18 percent lower. Children’s and YA increased 4 percent, to $137 million from $132 million. Children’s hardbacks and paperbacks showed slight increases, with board books up 15 percent. Digital audio continued to gain, at […]
London: So Many Debuts, So Few Big Deals
We’ve run out of polite synonyms for modest and soft, so we’ll start our final look at the dealmaking patterns leading into the London Book Fair with what jumped out as most distinctive. Debut fiction is always a closely-watched market bellwether, particularly as the mainstream fiction market appears to languish. The good news is that this year’s five weeks of sales and announcements ahead of the fair has recorded the most debuts in the past four years. At the same time, however, reported deals for substantial amounts (major and significant deals) are far lower than at any other point: 2019 […]