Year-end stats from Bookscan and PubTrack Digital and current earnings season reports from public companies have been giving us a good picture of 2016 trade publishing performance. So it feels a little odd to step back as the AAP — still running a month or two behind their normal schedule — has released monthly StatShot statistics for September 2016. Total digital sales for the month of $116.7 million were down 8.3 percent (or $10.6 million) compared to $127.3 million in September 2015. (Remember that the year-over-year ebook shortfall starts getting smaller in the September comparisons, since September 2015 is when Penguin Random House became the […]
Industry Statistics
People, Etc.
At Portfolio and Sentinel, Bria Sandford has been promoted to senior editor. Former longtime chairman of Canongate for 22 years (and stepfather of Jamie Byng) Christopher Bland, 78, died on Sunday of prostate cancer. He also had served as chair of the BBC board of governors and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and published two novels in the past few years. The UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is looking for a new sponsor after Bailey’s said it had “regretfully decided to make way for a new sponsor” after this year’s award. They took over sponsorship of what had been the Orange Prize in 2014. Chief […]
AAP Fills In Stats for August
We already have a pretty good picture of 2016 US trade book sales from year-end stats from Bookscan and PubTrack Digital, along with three quarters of data from public companies and now the AAP — still running about a month behind their own schedule — has released StatShot statistics for August 2016. Total digital sales for the month of $120 million were down 12 percent (or $16.6 million) compared to $136.6 million a year ago. Gross print shipments were $551.5 for August, compared to $501.8 million a year — with net print sales of $429.7 million up by a similar […]
Nielsen Estimates 16 Percent Decline in 2016 eBook Sales
In a set of very fast-moving overview slides, Nielsen Book global managing director Jonathan Stolper said the company is estimating that ebook unit sales for 2016 for the twenty plus companies that provide their data will show a decline of 16 percent, with unit sales of 177 million. (So far PubTrack Digital has compiled and published data only through September 2016.) That estimate for 2016 compares to 210 million units in 2015, 234 million units in 2014, 242 million units in 2013, closer to the 165 million units recorded in 2012. eBook volumes have fallen enough that hardcovers regained their place as […]
Print Sales Were Up Again In 2016
Nielsen Bookscan issued final sales data for 2016, counting print book (and physical audio) sales of 674 million units through the outlets they track — compared to approximately 653 million units sold in 2015. But that comparison comes with an asterisk, since the service added tracking for Family Christian’s 259 stores at the beginning of 2016, without backfilling any historical data. On a gross level, the unit sales count was higher by 20.5 million, or 3.1 percent, but that includes the unspecified millions of units added by Family Christian. As noted last week, what is clear is that all of the increases and […]
Holiday Print Sales Finish Reasonably Well
A good final holiday week of print book sales as measured by Nielsen Bookscan lifted the cumulative total for the five-week period into positive territory (though all of this year’s comparison numbers come with asterisks since 2015 was an unusual 53-week year in Nielsen’s tracking). For the five weeks starting with Thanksgiving, print unit sales totaled 119.6 million units, up 1.7 million units from a year ago, or a 1.5 percent gain. About half of those sales happen in the final two weeks of the holiday period, with print sales adding 2.2 million units in that window this time around, up 3.8 percent, at […]