| CATEGORY | % CHG. July | % CHG. YTD |
|---|---|---|
| Adult Hard (13)* | -20.9% | -18.9% |
| Adult Paper (16) | -3.7 | -16.0 |
| Mass Market (7) | -56.4 | -35.4 |
| Children’s/YA Hard (11) | 38.0 | -6.0 |
| Children’s/YA Paper (10) | -7.9 | -12.5 |
| Audio (13) | -1.0 | -9.4 |
| Audio Download (12) | 10.3 | 25.9 |
| Electronic (26) | 65.9 | 123.4 |
| Religious (22) | 6.9 | 8.9 |
| Higher Ed. (8) | 4.1 | -0.9 |
| Univ. Press Hard (29) | 1.4 | -6.8 |
| Univ. Press Paper (28) | -19.9 | -2.9 |
| Professional (8) | 0.4 | -7.5 |
| Elhi (9) | 3.4 | -9.3 |
(Measured in $ sales against same time periods, 2010)
* Number of reporting companies
The children’s/YA hardcover segment stole the spotlight from e-books in November with sales jumping 38.0% due largely to the strong showing of Inheritance, which sold more than 400,000 hardcover copies in its first week on sale in November. The segment, however, includes reports from only 11 publishers, so it is not possible to draw too many conclusions about an overall bounce in the segment. As for e-books, sales rose 65.9%, to $77.3 million, its slowest increase this year, at the 26 companies that reported sales. While the triple-digit growth the segment had been reporting was unsustainable, e-book sales still rose $30.7 million this November compared to $26.3 million in revenue in November 2010. Other theories for the slowdown include consumers waiting for new devices before buying new e-books and at least one publisher’s belief that the launch of Kindle’s library lending program with OverDrive last fall hurt sales. November also saw the mass market paperback segment all but die, with sales plummeting 56.4%, to $20.8 million.
