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 […]
Industry Statistics
In July, AAP Trade Dollars Shifted from Adult Hardcovers to New Potter
Still running behind, the AAP issued their monthly StatShot statistics for July 2016 — aka the month when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shipped into stores and went on sale (on July 31). We’ve known since three months ago from Scholastic’s public reporting that the new Potter release helped lift the company’s US trade division sales by just under $70 million, and indeed the July AAP stats show children’s hardcover sales for the month rising by $52.9 million compared to a year ago. But the AAP breakdowns also show that the Potter gain was more of a movement of inventory dollars […]
More Than Ever, Trade Looks for Last-Minute Holiday Boost
The print book trade still has not shaken off the post-election drag on sales, even with holiday sales well underway, Nielsen Bookscan statistics show. As we noted a month ago, much of the year’s performance will depend on how the final holiday book sales push fares. Despite Barnes & Noble’s quite public complaints, overall the lead up to the election did not appear to dampen book sales, though quarter by quarter 2016’s gains on 2015 have been ebbing throughout the year. The real “election effect” came the week of the presidential election itself and the following week, and print sales […]
Riggio Signals Another Poor Quarter, But What Comes After the Election is Critical
Barnes & Noble executive chairman Len Riggio appears to have indicated that the bookseller’s fiscal second quarter results through the end of October, due to be announced on November 22, will disappoint investors again: He tells Crain’s, “The preoccupation with the election was hurting sales,” adding, “we expect a bounce-back.” Riggio advises, “You won’t turn a switch and see the whole retail business coming back, but it hit a bottom and it’s starting to turn up.” Bear in mind that the bar for the chain for the second quarter is already set pretty low, since a year ago BN reported disappointing sales […]
Print Shipments Were Good in May
The AAP released their May StatShot statistics on Wednesday morning, starting to catch up though still running a bit behind their traditional schedule. As we explained earlier in the year, it turns out the monthly AAP reports on their own are not consistent indicators of…anything, but the best forward-looking measure — gross print shipments, before returns — was positive in the May report. Adult print shipments of $394 million were up $45 million (or about 13 percent); children’s gross print shipments edged up $4.5 million to $149.5 million. That leaves total gross print of $543.5 million up $49.5 million. Those gains […]
Rumblings of Kindle Limitations for Self-Published Authors
The latest Author Earnings report is surprised to find declining sales of self-published books in their October survey, as traditional publishers registered small gains and Amazon Publishing continues its steady rise. In the measure that publishers follow — gross ebook dollar sales — AE found traditional publishers with about 65 percent of Kindle revenues, and Amazon Publishing at about 10 percent of sales. They put self-published authors at just under 20 percent of sales (down from 25 percent in the last two surveys earlier in 2016) and “uncategorized single-author publisher” sales at just above 5 percent. And those figures include […]