New US StatShot Annual: A Flat Five Years for Traditional Publishers

The latest report from the Association of American Publishers reflects overall steady performance for US publishers, with nearly equal sales through print and online retail

As Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch (subscription required) points out, StatShot Annual, the yearly report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP), is an odd duck.

Unlike the monthly StatShot, the annual report uses a mix of publishers’ reports and extrapolated data modeled on the market to produce an estimate. The key value of the exercise, as Cader points out, is to create a basis for lobbying Washington. The top line offered by the Association of American Publishers’ annual report is that in 2017, the total US book-publishing industry generated $26.23 billion in net revenue. But again, it’s important to note that the StatShot report does not include retailer or consumer sales figures; it consists of reported and modeled publisher revenue.

If you look at just the annual StatShot figures from year to year, you may get a viable picture of an industry in a relatively flat half-decade. As Cader also notes, however, there’s been a drop in how many publishers actually report to the annual StatShot, from about 1,800 to around 1,200 (close to the size of the monthly report’s publisher pools), which may indicate that a larger part of this year’s numbers are estimated—something the association has not discussed.

Several key takeaways:

• In 2017, adult nonfiction appears to have shown the largest growth of tracked categories in terms of publisher revenue, with a 5.4 percent increase from 2016 to 2017. From 2013 to 2018, the category has grown 28.4 percent (over 2013).
• In adult fiction, the StatShot report sees a modest decline of 1.2 percent in 2017 over 2016. Over the 2013 to 2017 five-year span, adult fiction registered growth only in 2015.
• In the five years from 2013 to 2017, publisher revenue from children’s and YA fiction has grown by 11.3 percent. Nonfiction in the same time period has declined by 2.3 percent to $652 million.
• In 2017, digital audiobooks enjoyed 28.8 percent revenue growth over 2016. And in the past five years, the growth in audiobook revenues for the industry has been 142.2 percent. In today’s Hot Sheet, you’ll find us looking at self-publishing authors’ experience with audiobooks, as indies’ mileage may vary.

While the report itself is held strictly in confidence—association members get it free, but others must buy it—one of the most interesting elements has to do with where revenues are being earned: “For the first time,” the association writes, “publisher sales to physical and online retail channels were approximately equal at $7.6 billion and $7.5 billion respectively in 2017.” In a chart, you see brick-and-mortar store sales in an uneven but steady decline over the years, while online sales are in a fairly smooth curve upward. They nearly meet in 2017, and by next year, online sales may have climbed further over the physical stores’ glide-path downward.

Bottom line: As Cader has pointed out, the association is sharing with members raw data that tends to make the past five years for the trade look better, at a growth of 11.6 percent instead of the modeled data’s 5.4 percent. That said, the report reads, “Within online retail channels, 43.2 percent were print formats, 27 percent were ebooks, 16.3 percent were instructional materials, 10.5 percent were downloaded audio, and 3.1 percent were physical audio or a different format.” While conclusive metrics on the market are elusive, the breakdown of brick-and-mortar versus online retail may be the most valuable takeaway.