US print book sales as tracked by Nielsen BookScan fell 9.3 percent in units for 2012. The biggest decline came from the smallest format segment, mass market books, where unit sales fell 20.5 percent. Trade paperbacks weakened more than hardcovers during the year. (Nielsen BookScan does not currently track US ebook sales.) In the UK, Nielsen BookScan’s data shows consumer expenditures on physical books fell 4.6 percent for the year, to £1.514, with unit sales declining 3.4 percent to 202 million books. With 10.6 million print copies sold during the year, EL James accounted for one out of every 20 […]
Industry Statistics
Nielsen BookScan Expands to Include Walmart Data
Nielsen BookScan US announced that they are incorporating sales data from what has been the largest elusive seller of physical books in the US. Beginning with the first week of January 2013, point-of-sale data for printed books sold at over 4,000 Walmart locations across the U.S. and Puerto Rico will be included in the service’s sales database. BookScan estimates that with the new data, they will account for over 80 percent of the US retail print book market. “Greater accuracy of information and insight into book consumers is what all BookScan clients want, and adding Walmart data provides a big […]
As In June, Trade Paperbacks and eBooks Carry the Trade
The AAP reported sales for July from the nearly 1,200 publishers they track. Overall net trade sales of $522.5 million were up 12 percent, with all of the gains and then some coming from trade paperbacks and adult–very adult–ebooks, still led by the remarkable 50 Shades trilogy. July’s trade total was $16.4 million lower than in June. Children’s sales, boosted earlier in the year by release of the first Hunger Games movies, registered $98.1 million–down 9.5 percent compared to $108.4 million a year ago. eBook sales were almost the same as in June, at $137.8 million, up 62 percent versus […]
Self-Published Books Account for Close to Half of the “Traditional” Titles Bowker Tracks
Bowker has released a special analysis of title counts in the fast-growing self-published books segment. The new tabulations follow data from the company earlier in the year showing self-published print books comprising a substantial portion of the “traditional” annual output. (“Traditional” books does not count the over one million titles from POD factories.) When first reported in June, Bowker said self-published print books accounted for 36 percent of the “traditional” production in 2011; now the new report puts the total of 148,424 printed self-published books last year at 43 percent of the “traditional” output. While Bowker’s main year-to-year stats still […]
International: Bertelsmann Drops Gruner + Jahr Buyout Plan; UK Kindle Lending; Casual Vacancy Passes A Million
Gruner + Jahr said in a statement Friday that, contrary to earlier indications from August, Bertelsmann will not buy up the remaining 25.1 percent in the company not already under its control. “In our intensive and constructive talks with Bertelsmann, we came to the conclusion that the challenges ahead for G&J can best be mastered together,” Jahr managing director Winfried Steeger, managing director of Jahr Holding said in the statement obtained by Bloomberg. Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Rabe added: “Bertelsmann will continue its more than 40 year long, successful relationship with the Jahr family. We are in a strong position to […]
eNews: Consortium Launches Thema Global Codes Standard
In an attempt to streamline book category and classification codes into a unified standard, a group of book industry representatives from 15 companies are joining forces on Thema, which continues the work already begun by the iBIC project jointly owned by Nielsen and the Book Industry Communication. Both entities donated the iBIC intellectual property to Thema’s board of directors for the creation of the global standard. For now, Thema will function alongside such national book-categorization standards as BIC, BISAC, and CLIL, but the plan is to move all involved markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and […]