Book Sales Dipped in 2013

Industry sales had a small decline in 2013, falling to $27.01 billion from $27.12 billion in 2012, according to figures released last week by BookStats, the statistics program run by the AAP and BISG.

The decline is the fourth year in a row total industry revenue fell, although the four-year drop is a rather modest 3.3%. During that same four-year period, sales in the trade segment, the industry’s largest, rose 5.2%, even with a 2.3% decline in sales between 2012 and 2013. The 2013 decline in trade sales was largely due to the 7.1% drop in sales in adult fiction, which benefitted from blockbuster sales of the Fifty Shades trilogy in 2012, and the 4.9% decline in juvenile fiction, which had strong gains in 2012 tied to the Hunger Games trilogy.

Within the trade segment, which for purposes of BookStats includes religion, sales of all major formats fell in the year except for downloadable audiobooks, which had a very healthy 19.3% sales increase. E-book sales fell to $3.03 billion from $3.06 billion in 2012, due to a large decline in sales of e-books in the juvenile fiction segment, where sales declined 25.5%, to $347.7 million. In adult fiction, e-book sales rose in the year, to $1.92 billion, a 2% increase over 2012. E-books accounted for 38% of adult fiction sales in 2013, compared to 34.7% in 2012. In adult nonfiction, e-book sales rose 6.8%, to $593.1 million, accounting for 12.8% of nonfiction sales, up from 12.6% in 2012. In the religion category, e-book sales rose 14.4%, to $146.2 million. While trade e-book sales fell in 2013, the number of units rose 10%, to 512.7 million.

Figures for BookStats are based on sales reports from 1,616 publishers and extrapolated to include companies that did not report results.

Industry Sales by Segment, 2012–2013

(in millions)

Trade Book Sales by Category, 2012–2013

(in millions)

Trade Book Sales by Format, 2012–2013

(in millions)