October was a good month for the adult trade segment, as sales rose 25.8% over October 2016, according to AAP’s StatShot program.
The sales gain was led by huge increases for mass market paperback (up 55%), hardcovers (up 43.4%) and digital audio (up 41.9%). The hardcover increase was fueled by the release of titles by big name authors, including John Grisham and Ree Drummond. Both of these authors saw their new hardcovers sell over 100,000 copies.
Mass market sales were given a boost by titles from Christen Feehan and Clive Cussler.
Even with strong October for adult trade, adult e-books sales fell 6.3% compared to a year ago.
Sales in the children’s/young adult category rose 3.5% over last October. Board books had another good month with sales up 10.9%, but e-book sales fell 19.9%
For the first 10 months of 2017, sales of adult books were up 3.6% over 2016. Sales of children’s/young adult, however, fell 2.5% compared to the same period a year ago.
Sales for all 1,204 publishers who report their results to StatShot were up 27.6% in October, and 1.7% in the year to date
