With a second week of data, we’re still looking for the impact (if any) of Kindle sales as reflected in the broader USA Today chart. As was the case last week, Kathryn Stockett does seems to be getting a big Kindle boost. Almost every other title on the Kindle Top 10 declined overall in the USA Today list, though. Daniel Silva and Jennifer Weiner had the top two hardcover fiction titles for the week, but Weiner did less well relatively with the Kindle audience. Here’s our chart, ranking the books according to their position on the Kindle bestseller list, with […]
Industry Statistics
Data Coup: USA Today Bestseller List to Include Kindle Sales Data
As of today’s list, USA Today’s weekly tabulation of bestselling books incorporates data on Amazon Kindle book sales as a component of their rankings. Significantly, it’s the first outside list to which Amazon has contributed Kindle sales data. Amazon’s Laura Porco says in the announcement: “We are thrilled to be contributing Kindle book sales information to USA Today for their comprehensive bestseller list for books customers. Given the great overlap of taste between Kindle customers and physical book buyers, the USA Today Best-Selling Books List is truly reflective of what customers are buying regardless of format.” Among the open questions […]
The Problem with Statistics: BISG's New Method Still Inflates the Unknown
It’s that time of year again, when we all try to reckon with a wave of imprecise measures of our increasingly complex and nuanced business. The need for true data seems to increase in direct proportion to the supply of inadequate evaluations. In recent weeks, we’ve looked a little bit at the confusingly broad distinctions in the Bowker counts of new titles published last year and tried to reckon with Amazon’s unsubstantiated glimpse into rising Kindle sales. Discerning readers already know that on a standing basis, we very consciously do not report periodic numbers from the AAP, Census Bureau, and […]
The Things that Are Having Trouble Selling Round-Up
The AP reports a variety of grim measures of decline in the audiobook market. The 14 publishers who report audio sales to the AAP cite a 47 percent drop in revenue so far in 2009, while those physical audiobook sales tracked via Nielsen BookScan (which does not include any downloadable audio) have declined 20 percent in units for the year to date.AP As for individuals, writer-filmmaker John Sayles’ sweeping new 1,000-page novel SOME TIME IN THE SUN has failed to find a publisher since first going on submission last fall. Agent Anothny Arnove tells the LAT, “When I went out […]
The Tricks of Tracking the Content Explosion
I think this is going to turn out to be the month a lot of people realize that industry statistics–long an imperfect set of measures–are struggling mightily in mapping the complex and booming body of content that has some relationship to “books.” Earlier this week Bowker released preliminary statistics on new titles published during 2008, making a distinction between “traditional book publishing” and “on-demand/short-run” books. (The split was actually introduced last year, but drew more attention this year as title growth in the latter category more than doubled to 285,000 titles, making it larger than the “traditional” segment’s 275,000 titles.) […]
On Demand Books Overtake Traditional Titles for the First Time
Bowker’s preliminary data for books published in the US in 2008 shows that output from traditional publishers declined by about 3 percent to 275,232 new titles. But they project that the number of “on demand” books grew 132 percent to 285,394 books, now exceeding the traditional titles. The biggest declines for traditional publishers came in travel (down by 15 percent, with 4,817 new titles), fiction (down 11 percent, with 47,541 new titles the largest of all categories), and religion (down 14 percent, at 16,847 titles).Release