The Association of American Publishers recently released its final sales estimates for 2023 and also improved its data from prior years. Book sales were just slightly down compared to 2022 in terms of dollars. However, the number of overall units sold declined by nearly 6 percent, meaning publishers kept revenue up by increasing prices. Learn more from Publishers Weekly, which includes category and format breakdowns.
At Publishers Lunch, Michael Cader notes (sub required), “Though Circana BookScan–monitored sales had shown small growth in print units on their own for adult fiction (up 1.5 million units, or 1 percent), the AAP data—which adds together print and digital units and also includes export sales—shows declines across all four major categories.” (The four categories are adult fiction, adult nonfiction, children’s/YA fiction, and children’s/YA nonfiction.)
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.
