In his year-end analysis of BookScan and AAP statistics, Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch offered insights (subscription required) that are rarely discussed in the popular media but that reflect the underlying health and direction of the book business. A couple of his key points: children’s titles, especially educational titles, drove US print sales growth, and, due to the shift to online sales, backlist was dominant across every category—so much so that hardcover backlist sales outpaced hardcover frontlist sales in 2020. According to NPD BookScan, backlist titles are up from 63 percent in 2019 to 67 percent of all print unit sales in 2020. (Compare that to 2010, when backlist accounted for 54 percent of all unit sales.)
Publishing’s pain points not captured by BookScan and AAP: lower school and library sales for print. Subsidiary rights deals (e.g., foreign rights and translation deals) are also down, which can result in long-term earnings damage for authors. Still, lower overall returns led to better profits and sales for publishers.
Cader pointed out that large publishers have been slowly losing market share, partly due to the shift to online sales, which favors other publishers and self-published authors. He writes, “BookScan’s basket of ‘other publishers’ outside of the top 15 companies has been rising steadily year over year for some time now and would comprise their largest segment by far if you included the distribution clients who sell through Ingram Publisher Services, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and others.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
