The AAP reported sales from December for the limited set of reporting publishers they monitor, tabulating ebook sales from a dozen companies of $49.5 million for the month. Electronic books registered $441.3 million for the year among the reporting companies, compared to $166.9 million a year ago. When properly calculated, ebooks were just under 8 percent of net trade sales for the year. For December alone, ebooks comprised 9.5 percent of monitored sales. It was the highest monthly ebook sales number yet, outpacing the previous high from November of $46.6 million. Consistent with our analysis last month of figures for […]
Industry Statistics
The New York Times Unveils Their E-Book Bestseller Lists
The NYT’s first-ever e-book bestseller lists will appear in print on February 13 and online on February 11 (reflecting rankings for the week ending January 30), as the paper previewed for publishing people at an event this morning. Not only will the paper publish a separate e-book list, but there will also be a hybrid print and e-book bestseller list. A spokesperson said the paper “wanted to provide more comprehensive lists of which books are selling.” Unlike USA Today’s approach, the hybrid lists give no indication of whether e-books outsell print editions; a note on their methodology says only that […]
AAP and BISG Engage Bowker to Collect New Stats–And Now They Need Publisher Participation
The AAP and BISG have hired Bowker as the data collection provider for the new set of industry statistics they are setting out to compile together. Publishers are encouraged to participate in the new data-gathering process, with a “target rollout date” of BEA-time this May. The new venture will compile statistics for 2010 as well as gathering new historical data for 2009 and 2008 along the same criteria. AAP president Tom Allen and BISG executive director Scott Lubeck write in a joint message: “The industry’s response to the new joint venture has been overwhelmingly positive, due to the critical need […]
BISG E-Book ISBN Survey Shows Just How Much More Work Needs To Be Done
Last week the Book Industry Study Group held a meeting to review findings of a study conducted by Michael Cairns of Information Media Partners on how ISBNs are deployed with respect to e-books – or more specifically, how there is nowhere near a consistent standard or best practice for doing so. The full study will be available in a few weeks but Cairns has made the executive summary available at his blog Personanondata. Thanks to the proliferation of e-book formats and Amazon’s insistence on its own proprietary format, ASIN, the study finds that “the ISBN agency is virtually irrelevant to […]
A New Survey Shows A Widening Generational Gap of Mystery Readers
Sisters in Crime, in conjunction with Bowker PubTrack, released the results of a survey of 1,056 mystery readers conducted in September 2010 on their book-buying habits. And while many of the results will not be a surprise both to those in the industry and in the mystery community, what struck me in particular is the gap between readers over and under the age of 40, and how current acquisitions may appeal more to the younger group while it neglects, for good or for ill, older readers. Generally, the majority of mystery/crime fiction buyers tend to be women over the age […]
AAP-Tracked eBook Sales Hold Steady, But Are Under 7 Percent of Month’s Sales
The AAP reported their October sales numbers this morning, with everyone’s favorite number to watch–their tabulation of ebook sales for 12 reporting publishers–up slightly at $40.7 million. (They have been about the same, month to month, since July.) With net print trade sales from a larger group of publishers reported at $569 million, ebooks comprised 6.7 percent of sales for the month. That’s below the 8 percent of trade sales that ebooks comprise for the entire year through October. (We’ve discussed previously that monthly ebook figures may not be all that precise; also as previously written, our percentages differ from […]