After a positive response to our pre-Frankfurt deal analysis and charts, our webmaster built a sophisticated set of tools to let us analyze all the data locked inside our Deals database, the largest collection of deal data ever compiled. So now we can offer an assessment of the deal trends of 2011, and we can put those results in the context of a five-year pattern as well. The data shows that US book deal volume increased for the second straight year in 2011, at 5,211 transactions in all, up 5.4 percent overall (after a 7.7 percent gain in 2010). Nonfiction […]
Industry Statistics
Nicholls, Oliver and Pratchett Top UK 2011 Charts
The Guardian has printed their annual look at the Nielsen UK sales charts, this time with more depth and transparency than ever. The presentation includes downloadable files of the top 5,000 or so selling books and data about the leading genres across the market. We’ve simplified some of the highlights below, but you can get the full data here. As in the US, Nielsen only tracks print book sales in the UK and does not currently capture ebook data (though ebooks comprise somewhere between 8 to 10 percent of the UK market right now). Nielsen UK does capture nearly all […]
Paolini Sales Nearly 500k; Isaacson Sells A Lot
Random House Children’s reports another very strong opening day for Christopher Paolini, with INHERITANCE selling 489,500 units yesterday (including print, ebook and audio editions), it’s first day on sale. The publisher says “hardcovers dominated the opening-day sell-through, with an 83/17 percent print to digital split.” Paolini’s BRISINGR sold approximately 550,000 units on opening day in the US in September 2008, back when Borders was still operating. In other sales news, Simon & Schuster continues to demur regarding any reporting of sales over the past two weeks for Walter Isaacson’s STEVE JOBS biography. But we’ve spoken to few executives familiar with […]
AAP eBook Sales Stay At Around 20%
The AAP has caught up on their monthly reports, issuing sales totals for August. eBooks were still the second-largest trade segment, behind adult paperbacks, registering $88.8 million. Per the trend for most of the year, ebooks are still running at about 20 percent of reported trade sales. We’ve straightened out some things that have confused us in the past few months, so we’re going to take a different approach to our explanations and disclaimers this month. Currently, 18 publishers report ebook sales to the AAP; the only company of scale that reports print sales but not ebook sales is WW […]
AAP July Sales Numbers
The AAP is still catching up on their monthly sales numbers and just released their statistics for July. (To repeat last month’s reminder, this is the data from the limited set of publishers who reported monthly to the AAP, not to be confused with the larger pool of annual data and estimates reflected in the new Book Stats program the publishers organization runs along with the BISG, which debuted in August). After June’s pronounced declines in adult hardcover and trade paperback sales compared to a year ago, the July numbers show a rebound, at least for adult hardcovers. Net sales […]
Deal Volume Grows Ahead of Frankfurt
With the Frankfurt Book Fair looming, we have compiled our semi-annual look at the state of dealmaking, this time bolstered by some very pretty charts. Visualizing our data should make it easier for readers to draw their own conclusions from the statistics, and it allows us to reveal more nuance to the figures as well. The first chart below looks at all US Publishers Marketplace deal reports from September. Deal volume among “comparable categories” continues to grow, up 7.5 percent over last year (when reports jumped almost 17 percent from the recession trough of 2009). But total deal volume is […]