Tuesday, April 07, 2009

US book sales down 2.8 percent


Spending on books in the UK may be down by an average of 6 percent in real terms, but the figure in the US seems even worse, for according to a report by the Association of American Publishers, some stateside are reporting a slump of up to 21 percent.

Publishers Weekly reports that total books sales in the US fell by 2.8 percent in 2008, with sales down in nine out of the 14 categories surveyed.

These totals are based on monthly reports supplied by 81 publishers, supplemented by Census Bureau data. The AAP applies the percentage change reported in each category by the reporting companies to the previous year's totals.

The largest increase for 2008 was perhaps not surprisingly, in the e-book sector, where sales rose a staggering 68.4 percent to $113.2 million. In comparison, the printed sector, particualarly hardbacks, had a very difficult year, with sales siginficantly down in for both children and adults.

Despite these apparently dismal findings, the AAP estimates that industry sales grew at a 1.6 percent compound annual growth rate during the period 2002–2008 period. During this time span, when averaged overall, the mass market paperback and the book club/mail order segments were the only ones to have a drop in sales. Excluding e-books, the religious book segment (good news for me, as my own work falls into this category) showed the strongest growth, at 4.5 percent.

The full report can be read here

1 comment:

eBook Publishing said...

Now days many books are freely available on the internet and also many of them prefer to read e-book rather than traditional book and that could be the reason behind the slowdown.

Thanks for sharing this nice article with us.