The AAP reported their StatShot sales from approximately 1,100 publishers for January, February and March of 2018 all at once on Friday afternoon. As you might expect, the data shows trade publishing sales starting the year off strong, driven by Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, along with other new titles including The Woman In the Window by AJ Finn and 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. But the monthly comparisons show a very strong January, a more modestly positive February, and then a declining March (even with Easter falling early in 2018), underscoring the key question for now […]
Industry Statistics
LBF: Nonfiction Tops Dealmaking
Consistent with our deal stats preview from Friday, the most notable trend from this London Book Fair dealmaking season is the surge of big deals — and “major” deals in particular — for nonfiction. And that’s without counting Hachette’s pickup of Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein’s next book, or other just-announced nonfiction from today including books from Ash Carter, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Senator Doug Jones. (Our LBF count covers the five weeks leading up to the show, from Monday, March 5 to Monday, April 9.) The 11 major nonfiction deals are the most we have ever reported in an LBF lead-up: Overall […]
London Book Fair Deal Trends: Market Swings Hard to Nonfiction
It’s that time again. We leave behind the luminous, rapturous accounts of heated snapping up of a few projects in advance of an upbeat rights fair to give you a look at the actual data on the marketplace for new book projects over the past five weeks, starting March 5. As usual, today we provide a preliminary look at the breakdowns — from which the trends are already quite clear — and we will follow up Tuesday morning, when the London Book Fair formally opens, with the final totals. Coming off a year in which some of the biggest names […]
November AAP Data Reveals Little
The AAP released their StatShot figures for November 2017 — another month in which revisions to the final comparison data from November 2016 makes any declaration of year-over-year changes pointless. That’s because a year ago, the AAP told us November 2016 net trade sales were $732.1 million ($512.5 million adult; $219.6 million children’s/YA). But now they say sales that month were actually $769.8 million, more than 5 percent higher ($522.3 million adult; $247.5 million children’s/YA). Now, for November 2017, we are told net trade sales were $737.8 million. That’s a little up from what we thought November sales were a […]
AAP Stats Rebounded In October
AAP StatShot figures show a strong October 2017, though we have demonstrated that this measure has extreme fluctuations from month to month (and is further complicated by a constantly revised historical baseline). The trade was due for a strong October, since September AAP numbers were down. Also, a year ago publishers had steered their big releases away from October with the presidential election looming, so the improved October shipments show a return to normal. With a stack of big releases (including Dan Brown’s Origin), adult gross sales of $693 million were more than a return to the $640 to $650 […]
Washington Post Revamps Bestsellers, Becomes Amazoned
The Washington Post revised their bestseller lists, previously based solely on Bookscan print sales data, to incorporate data from their cousins at Amazon. Adding the etailer’s ebook sales gives the lists an extra dimension that brings them closer to lists from the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, however, the Post has also infected itself with Amazon’s ebook borrowing statistics, tilting their results towards the limited universe of titles included in Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading. Additionally, the Post has “syndicated” the Amazon Charts Most Read list, and is introducing a new, local Most Read […]