Sales of adult fiction and nonfiction rose 9.6% in April at the publishers that report their results to AAP’s StatShot statistics program. Within the adult category, e-book sales rose 38% for the month, to $92 million. Sales of trade paperback were up 10%, and hardcover sales inched up 0.5%. Sales of mass market paperback fell 15.6%. In the children’s/young adult segment, sales in April increased 24.3% at reporting publishers driven by a 42.8% increase in hardcover sales. Sales of e-books rose 29%, to $7.5 million.
For the first four months of the year, sales in the children’s/young adult group, benefiting from the Hunger Games sales, were up 62.6% with hardcovers up 78.2% and paperback ahead 34.4% at reporting publishers. E-book sales were up 187.8%, to $71.7 million. In the adult category, sales in January-April period rose 3.5%, led by a 27.5% e-book increase, to $364.5 million at reporting companies. Sales of hardcovers in the period were up 4%, but mass market and trade paperback sales were down 19.8% and 5.6%, respectively.
In other segments, April sales were off 14.6% in the religious category, down 15.7% in professional books, and off 11.9% in K-12 instructional materials. Sales of higher education course materials rose 22.5%. For the year to date, sales in religious books were down 4.7%, professional book sales down 6.5%, and K-12 sales down 12.7%. Higher ed sales rose 11.5%.
