NPD Bookscan issued an executive summary of book sales trends through the third quarter of 2017. Print sales through outlets tracked by the service rose 2 percent (or 6 million units) through the first nine months, to 467 million units, as ebook sales counted through their companion PubTrack Digital service fell 13 million units, down 15 percent to 78 million units. That puts total tracked book units down 1.3 percent. Per trends from earlier in the year, frontlist print sales are down 5 percent as backlist sales are up 6 percent. On their list of top 10 print books for […]
Industry Statistics
AAP First Half Data Shows….Something? Sales Gained, By Some Amount
The AAP reported their StatShot sales for June, including summaries for the first half of 2017, but good luck figuring out what — if anything — the statistics indicate. Traditionally you would evaluate current stats by comparing to historical comps. But the AAP keeps changing the bar on those comps, which leaves little room for confidence about any of their data. (Mind you, we are not blaming the organization: They rely on publisher-contributed data and do their best with it.) The problem is that initial StatShot reports are considered preliminary, and the monthly numbers can and often do change significantly […]
Frankfurt Deal Totals Are Flat, As Six-Figure Adult Buys Decline
With the final pre-Frankfurt deal reports counted, we can tell you that total US deal volume was about even with the past two years (still well off the peak in 2014). But reported six-figure or better deals for adult books declined measurably — regardless of the accounts you might read about a handful of books — with the only growth coming from children’s. For deals of all sizes, nonfiction sales — always the largest category — were strong in total number, bouncing back from last year’s dip to a more normal level. Fiction was just below even with last year, […]
Heading Into Frankfurt, Deal Volume Rises, and Mid-Sized Fiction Bets Gain
Moving past the annual hype over “heated auctions,” it’s time for our first check-in on the actual state of dealmaking heading into the Frankfurt Book Fair, with the big final week still to come. For now, total deal volume is looking strong — particularly for adult titles, with those categories trending in line with 2014, which was busiest Frankfurt dealmaking period in years — though softer children’s and digital publisher sales are holding down the totals. A clearer trend emerges from analyzing reported transactions for six-figures or better. With 7 significant deals for fiction and 4 major deals so far, […]
May AAP Stats Show Some Increased Shipments, Uptick in eBooks
The AAP released their May StatShot report, putting new data against a mostly flat marketplace. The outlier for the month is that ebook sales rose for the first time in long time, albeit marginally — at $88.4 million, up a big $2.4 million compared to $86 million a year ago. (May 2016 was down $19.4 million from May 2015, however. And the AAP data is in conflict with PubTrackDigital’s unit sales counts for May from their reporting publishers, which shows a significant decline year-over-year — so for now you should not read too much into this AAP stat.) Digital audio […]
Sales Starts: Clinton Tops a Big Week for New Titles
A wave of big books landed last Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton’s What Happened registering the biggest opening week, topping Bookscan’s chart with just under 168,000 print copies sold across the outlets they track — which publisher Simon & Schuster notes is “the biggest first week sales recorded by any author for a hardcover nonfiction title published since 2012.” (That’s almost twice the opening week sales in June 2014 of Hard Choices, which moved approximately 86,000 print books — and was said to have comprised total sales of 100,000 to 120,000 units in the first week — though well behind opening […]