The Association of American Publishers released their first-quarter StatShot, showing that sales were up by 0.9 percent. As a reminder, AAP reports include book sales across all formats and all channels but only for members of AAP. (Two notable publishers not included in AAP stats are Sourcebooks and Entangled.)
- Adult fiction: +5.5%
- Adult nonfiction: -7.8%
- Adult audiobooks: +17.3%
- Adult ebooks: -6%
- Children’s and YA fiction: -0.7%
- Children’s and YA nonfiction: +16.8%
- Children’s and YA audiobooks: +8.5%
- Children’s and YA ebooks: +1.8%
Learn more in Publishers Weekly.
Related: This week the Wall Street Journal reported that “dad books are dying” (gift link) due to the continued decline in nonfiction sales. According to Circana BookScan, print until sales are down about 8 percent overall. Books about politics and current affairs are down 19 percent. As usual, publishers tend to blame competing media, but particularly podcasts. Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt blames all-consuming world events and says people are reading the news instead. It’s still worth reading publisher Kenneth Whyte’s commentary on the nonfiction decline, in which he defends the podcast as keeping writers visible between books and drawing attention to books.
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.
