Book Sales Growing

Yesterday Publisher’s Marketplace released a detailed report on Industry books sales collected by BookStats.  Below are the things I thought you would be interested in reading:

Children’s and YA adult books comprised the “fastest-growing category” in 2011. Sales of $2.78 billion were up 12 percent from $2.48 billion in 2010, reflecting in part the boost from the success of The Hunger Games.

eBooks vaulted to the largest-selling format for adult fiction, comprising 31 percent of dollar sales. Adult fiction ebooks went from $585 million in 2010 to $1.27 billion in 2011.

Brick-and-mortar bookstores remain the single largest retail channel, though these sales fell 12.6 percent following the bankruptcy of Borders.

“Trade” Books (with Religion)
2011                                       2010
Overall $13.97 billion   $13.9 billion
Print $11.1 billion
eBooks $2.074 billion  $878 million
Other $796 million

Trade Books (without Religion)
2011                                        2010
Overall $12.517 billion $12.59 billion
eBooks $1.97 billion $838 million

Adult Fiction

Overall: $4.11 billion
eBooks: $1.27 billion
Print books: $2.84 billion
Children’s/YA Books
2011: $2.78 billion
2010: $2.48 billion

All Publishing
Sales
2011: $27.2 billion
2010: $27.9 billion

Channel Breakouts

Brick-and-mortar bookstores: $8.59 billion (-12.6%)
Institutional sales (libraries, schools, business, government, etc.): $5.39 billion
Online retail: $5.04 billion (+35%)
Wholesale/jobbers: $5.04 billion
Direct-to-consumer: $1.11 billion

A full report and/or a complete electronic dashboard, can be purchased from the BookStats site www.bookstats.org/ for release shortly.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy