After a couple years of no industry-wide statistics and many years before that of poor, illusory numbers, the publishing industry is back on the road to measuring itself with the new BookStats, prepared jointly by the AAP and BISG, released in highlight form to trade media on Tuesday. All of the new numbers as you will read about them are modeled estimates rather than actual data–but they draw on data supplied by just under 2,000 publishers, and the methodology for extrapolating the estimates was far more careful and rational than the process used by the BISG alone for its annual […]
Industry Statistics
BAMM Picks Up Two More Waldenbooks Outlets
Books-a-Million has agreements with The Cafaro Company–whom we mentioned yesterday–to take over at least two more Waldenbooks locations that are being liquidated. One is in Monroe, MI and one is in St. Clairsville, OH. Both were on that “option” list of additional stores Books-a-Million was looking at when they initially bid for 30 Borders Group locations. So BAMM is now filling all five of the “option” stores, along with two other superstores, all managed by Cafaro. Cafaro spokesperson Joe Bell said the company has eight locations currently occupied by Borders Group and “of these, he said, most will become Books-A-Million […]
AAP May eBook Sales Nudge Up As Print Sales Take Another Hit
eBook sales reported by 15 companies to the AAP comprised $73.4 million for May, and accounted for 18.5 percent of all net trade sales for the month, consistent with the prior two months. eBooks were the second-largest trade format again, behind trade paperbacks. Between the rise of ebooks and the decline of Borders, overall trade sales suffered their biggest monthly drop so far this year, though, with the steepest falls in adult hardcover and adult mass markets. Down $52.9 million even with the gain in ebooks, overall trade sales of $398.3 declined almost 12 percent in the month. Here are […]
Where Will Borders Shoppers Take Their Dollars?
Now that Borders is moving towards liquidation, we thought it might be useful to look back at our special item from last month featuring consumer survey data elicited exclusively for Publishers Lunch readers by Bowker PubTrack Consumer on where regular Borders customers might take their book-purchasing dollars if the chain goes out of business. Some of the results are likely to differ now, since the data comes from the roughly 10 percent of surveyed book buyers who indicated buying a book from Borders in April, but it addresses critical questions on the minds of all publishers and authors right now. […]
AAP eBook Numbers Rise, Making Up About 19 Percent of April Trade Sales
Monthly ebook sales as measured by the AAP from 14 reporting publishers rose slightly in April to $72.8 million, the second-biggest ebook sales month so far this year after February’s monster month of $90.3 million. Once again, that puts ebooks behind adult trade hardcover ($111.4 million) and trade paperbacks ($95.9 million) for the month, and but this time they comprised just under 19 percent of all trade sales for April. The sales numbers seem to indicate that Random House’s move to the agency model in March (when ebook sales were at $69 million) has been absorbed into the overall ebook […]
Where Would Borders Shoppers Take Their Book Dollars?
We’re excited to launch a new, regular feature today in conjunction with Bowker PubTrack Consumer. They will be including questions posed by Publishers Lunch as part of their regular monthly online surveys of over 6,000 book buyers across the country. The result and analysis of that information will run exclusively here in Publishers Lunch and at PublishersMarketplace.com. We’ll be looking to survey consumers on hot button issues for the trade that don’t usually receive this kind of focused treatment. Feel free to share your thoughts with us on potential future lines of questioning. And of course the folks at Bowker […]