Book Sales in 2020: Where We’re At, Where We’re Headed

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has improved sales in children’s educational titles as well as in financial and domestic sustainability

During a June 25 community roundtable hosted by the Independent Book Publishers Association, two representatives from NPD BookScan presented the latest data on sales in the US book market, with a focus on how the pandemic has affected specific categories.

A quick primer on NPD BookScan and its data: The company tracks print unit sales through 16,000 retailers (both brick-and-mortar and online), which they claim represent 85 percent of the US retail market. They also have a separate tracking service, PubTrack Digital, for ebook sales, but that data does not come from retailers; it comes from the top 450 publishers. NPD BookScan doesn’t offer insight into audiobook sales at all, nor does it track much of the self-publishing market, which is ebook driven and largely off its radar. Still, NPD BookScan provides some of the best data available on sales, especially for traditional publishing and overall trends.

Historically, the book market has shown resilience, but it’s also a flat market. NPD’s David Walter spoke to how, during the 2008 financial collapse, the market was stable and ebooks—a new format, driven by new e-reading devices—propelled growth. Even at the height of unemployment in 2010, the industry showed growth, although over the last seven years or so, the total print + ebook market has been flat. (We imagine that if you were able to roll audiobook sales into that, industry performance would be better.)

Ebooks may see a sales bump in 2020. Walter said that March 2020 figures show that ebook sales are up 17 percent versus February 2020, and usually there is not any seasonality to the format that would lead to an expectation of ebooks growing so much in March. Ebook sales peaked for traditional publishers in 2013 at 242 million unit sales; in 2019, they stood at 147 million units. So it probably wouldn’t take much to beat last year’s figures, given how weak they’ve been. Unaddressed during the presentation: how much self-published ebooks, typically far cheaper than traditionally published ebooks, might be affecting the overall ebook market, or how subscription services like Kindle Unlimited or Scribd might be affecting growth.

While print unit sales are up in 2020 versus 2019, dollars are down. Walter said this is because a high volume of sales during the COVID period were lower-priced books, such as juvenile nonfiction titles, which are up 26 percent this year versus 2019. Pre-pandemic, one of the key growth areas was adult nonfiction, but going into March and April, adult nonfiction sales slowed down and are off by 7 percent versus last year. However, the outlook is beginning to improve due to the popularity of anti-racism books. Meanwhile, adult fiction sales have moved more strongly over to the ebook format.

The winning adult categories of the first quarter of 2020: history and political science (driven by A Very Stable Genius), crafts and hobbies, performance arts (driven by Jessica Simpson’s memoir), graphic novels, and the classics (driven by Little Women—there was a new movie adaptation).

The losing adult categories of the first quarter of 2020: health and fitness, biography (because of the outperformance last year of Michelle Obama’s memoir), suspense/thrillers, travel, and home/gardening (because of the outperformance last year of Marie Kondo’s book).

In the juvenile sector, the best performing categories include education and reference (of course, due to schooling needs), games and activities (to keep kids occupied and entertained), and other educational categories like history/sports/people/places and biographies. The only fiction category for kids to show meaningful growth this year: science fiction and fantasy. One of the key takeaways of the presentation was that publishers with nonfiction content in the educational and homeschool space—especially those serving the younger end of the scale—will have a very good year.

Cookbooks have seen a sales bump during COVID, with particular interest in bread/baking as well as juices and smoothies. Cooking for kids (ages nine to 12) has also seen nice growth. What’s not doing well in cooking: quick-and-easy recipes, low-fat and low-carb cookbooks, and anything related to appliances. This is not so surprising—people have more time to spend at home in the kitchen, and we’re looking for comfort foods.

As far as macro trends, two were mentioned: an interest in minimalism and a desire to be financially independent. Even prior to COVID, small was the new big, and less was more. A desire to be frugal and save more has now been amplified by the crisis. More people are looking at gardening and homesteading books and how to sustain their families when supply chains are threatened. Millennials are driving the trend to save more money and even retire early: they are likely to have suffered unemployment during the 2008 recession or witnessed a loved one go through it. Banks have seen a big increase in deposits since the pandemic started, and a record number of Americans are saving their money. So books on financial independence are expected to grow in popularity. More broadly, though, NPD’s Chloe DeFilippis said that any nonfiction book that helps adults navigate our current moment economically and psychologically is expected to perform well.

Bottom line: What happens if a second wave of the virus hits and we go into lockdown again? Walter said, “Consumers know how to deal with that. That wouldn’t be the biggest challenge for the book industry. The supply chain held up pretty well. It is going to be the longer term economic impact on people’s wallets and what books are seen as essential.” But he did voice concern over what might happen if an important part of the book business, such as a printer, were to fall away under pressure. (Neither of the biggest printers in the US are in a good position; one is for sale and the other has filed for bankruptcy. See our coverage from last year.)