It surprises some people, but trade publishing sales have been good this year. Really. Dollar sales, as measured by the AAP, grew 5.8 percent in the first 10 months of 2024. Adult fiction remained particularly strong, helped by big sales for Sarah J. Maas (who moved well over 8 million print units alone) and the rapid rise of Freida McFadden (who sold roughly 4.9 million print units). The arrival of Spotify drove significant growth in audiobook sales—which have outpaced ebooks sales for the year so far for the first time ever. And the big publicly-reporting publishing companies boosted the topline […]
Year End
2024: The Year In Mergers
It was a pretty odd and modest year in mergers and acquisitions if we are being honest. Not only were there no blockbuster deals, there were very few acquisitions of any significant scale at all. There was a cluster of distress sales, however: Australian retailer was bought out of bankruptcy reorganization, as was Tattered Cover in Colorado. Barnes & Noble Education avoided delisting of its stock through a complicated refinancing that left Immersion Corporation in control. Canadian retailer Indigo went private in order to reorganize and recover, and Endeavor went private again after only a few years as a public […]
2024: The Year In Stories
As noted briefly in our anniversary post last month, it’s been another busy year for the small but mighty crew at PL + PM, with multiple site enhancements as well as daily reporting that goes deeper than ever. Below is an informal recap, not necessarily of the year’s “biggest” stories, but of pieces and coverage areas where Lunch has brought an extra dimension to community knowledge: All Things AI We have endeavored to provide serious consideration of the issues, opportunities, and egregious theft throughout the year. Among some of our more notable firsts and/or onlies: We revealed the actual AI […]
2024: The Year In Legal News
This year legal themes were almost all holdovers from the battles being fought in 2023. In one significant final chapter, the Association of American Publishers prevailed over the Internet Archive—again. In September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the finding that held IA guilty of “wholesale and unauthorized copying” and the illegal files started coming down. That decision became final in December, as the deadline for IA to file a cert petition with the Supreme Court passed. The IA will now make an unspecified monetary judgment payment to the organization. Book bans were once again—and will likely continue to […]
Best Of: The New Yorker, WSJ, Apple, Kobo, And More
HBG to Encourage Pleasure Reading Among Kids in 2025
HBG and Hachette UK ceo David Shelley’s year-end letter focuses on concern over declines in pleasure reading by children. In response, “We’re launching a new venture next year which is relatively simple but hopefully will have some efficacy: Raising Readers, which is to include a page at the back of many of our black-and-white adult books, talking about the value of fostering a lifelong habit of reading for pleasure and tips on how to do so. Ideally, this letter would be signed by whoever created the book, either based on a template we’ll provide or in your own words.” He […]