The Association of American Publishers (AAP) recently released sales data for the first half of the year, which indicates the general performance of trade publishers. AAP has over 1,200 publisher-members, and the members report on all their shipments to sales accounts, in dollars.
Based on earlier reports from other sources—such as Nielsen BookScan and the public earnings reports of major publishers—there were already indicators that publishers had experienced a slight sales decline during the first half of 2016. The AAP figures confirm that: book sales were down 3.4 percent, driven primarily by a dropoff in ebook sales and higher print returns.
It’s hard to anticipate what the full year’s results might look like—or what to expect from the fourth quarter. Nielsen BookScan, which tracks print sales, shows declines of nearly 10 percent during election week when compared to the same period last year. That said, most of the mainstream publishing industry avoided any major releases the first week or two of November, waiting to issue new releases in mid-November. (To mention just a few: Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovich, No Man’s Land by David Baldacci, Chaos by Patricia Cornwell, Odessa Sea by Clive Cussler, The Sleeping Beauty Killer by Mary Higgins Clark.)
Bottom line: Back in August, we reported on the “dry spell” for new novels on the bestseller list, and we talked to a range of experts to determine if it had any meaning. The overall feeling then was that the dry spell wasn’t indicative of any kind of failure or systematic breakdown. Now, the worry is that publishing may have a less-than-stellar year due to the confluence of several events: the election cycle, the lack of a blockbuster title catching fire with the public, and the weakness of Barnes & Noble going into the holiday season (see our next item).
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.
