Publishers should be pleased, if only slightly, that book sales for consumer books were up 0.8% from January to December 2015. Granted, a move from $7.1 billion to $7.2 billion isn’t a huge jump, but in the world of publishing where many predict a dire future, this is a positive sign. On the other side of the coin, overall publisher revenue for 2015 was down 2.6% from the previous year. The Association of American Publishers brought us this interesting information in their article, “AAP StatShot: Trade Sales Up Slightly at Year End 2015.”
Some interesting highlights of the report includes:
- Downloaded audio and paperback books have grown every month in 2015 vs. the same month in 2014.
- eBook sales declined this year – mostly from the Childrens & Young Adult category (C/YA down 43.3% from 2014).
- Trade publishers fared better than educational or scholarly publishers.
More details will be available with the 2015 StatShot Annual Report, which includes information from more than 1,800 publishers as well as market modeling, and will be released soon.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
