Through the first 10 months of 2013 sales of adult trade books fell 0.6% and sales of children’s/young adult dropped 9.7%, according to AAP’s monthly StatShot figures for October. In the 10-month span, sales in the adult hardcover segment were up 7.6% at the publishers that report to AAP with sales hitting $1.12 billion and sales of adult e-books were up 2.2%, to $1.09 billion. Gains in hardcover and e-book sales in the adult trade segment were offset by a 10% decline in sales of trade paperbacks and a 4.4% decline in mass market paperback sales. Within audio, phyysical audio sales were down 4.6% in the the January-October period, but sales of downloadable audio were up 15.3%.
In the children’s/ya segment the 9.7% decline in the January-October period was due to a 14.3% drop in hardcover sales and a 34.9% decline in e-book sales.
Among the other segments, 10-month sales of religious books were off 3.7%, but sales were up in all other segments: professional book sales rose 0.6%; K-12 instructional material sales rose 7.4%; higher ed sales increased 2.8%; and sales of university presses rose 2.7%.
Sales are based on reports from 1,205 publishers.
