Led by a 65.1% increase in e-book sales, January sales jumped 43.7% in the children/young adult category in 2014 compared to January 2013, according to figures in AAP’s StatShot program.
The hardcover format also had a good start to the year with sales up 53.7% in the children/young adult category. The increase was spurred by sales of the e-book editions of the Divergent trilogy. Sales of adult trade titles rose 2.8% in January as e-book sales rose 6.4% and hardcover sales increased 4.7%. Sales of trade paperback fell 5.1% in the month. With sales hitting $116 million, e-book sales accounted for 32% of adult trade revenue in January 2014 compared to 31% in January 2013. The biggest gain in the adult trade segment was recorded by downloadable audio where sales increased 29.0% and at $12.4 million had triple the sales of physical audio.
In other categories, sales of religious presses fell 7.4% and sales of professional books dropped 5.2%. The educational segments got off to a good start with sales of K-12 instructional materials up 5.6% and higher education material sales up 7.0%.
Sales are based on reports from 1,218 publishers.
