Total revenue across the 1,325 publishers that report results to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program fell 4% in April compared to a year ago. The decline was due, in part, to a 12.5% drop in digital audiobook sales across both the adult and children's/YA book categories.
Audiobooks have been the primary driver of trade sales for more than a year following the November 2023 entry of Spotify into the market, which brought in new customers and sales. But with Spotify's sales now already included in results from 2024, Spotify doesn't represent a fresh injection of new sales, making regular double-digit monthly gains harder to achieve. The April decline left digital audio sales up only 1.2% in the trade sector in the first four months of 2025 over 2024.
In adult trade fiction, sales dropped 7.6% and digital audio sales dropped 9% for the month of April. Hardcovers for the category dropped 14.6%, while trade paperback sales declined 6.7%. AAP continues to track mass market paperback and physical audiobook sales, which are minuscule.
Adult nonfiction sales had a more modest 1% decline in April. A 17.6% drop in digital audio was largely offset by a 19.7% jump in hardcover sales. Trade paperback sales fell 11.3%.
In children's books, where digital audio plays a much less prominent role than in adult books, fiction sales increased 3.9% in April and were up 15.5% in nonfiction. The two largest print formats, hardcover and paperback, had monthly increases of 13.4% and 30.3%, respectively.
Among other categories, sales of religious books had a rare bad month, falling 10.2%. Print drives the category, as the segment has no reported digital audio sales, and sales of hardcover and paperback fell 7.2% and 18.5%, respectively.
April sales of professional books increased 3.4%, led by a big jump in sales of business books. Sales in the higher education segment were up 2.2% in the month, while sales of university presses fell 4.6%.
With the overall 4% decline for the month, industry sales from the start of the year to the end of April were down 0.2%, compared with the previous year. The weak April showing by digital audio prevented it from offsetting softness in some other areas in the first four months of the year. In adult books, for instance, digital audio sales were up only 2.3%, while sales of the biggest format, trade paperbacks, fell 11% in the four-month period. This results in an overall 2.4% decline in adult books in the first four months of 2025.
In the children's books/YA segment, sales through the first four months of the year were up 1%, as a 10.1% drop in digital audio was offset by low single-digit sales increases in hardcover and paperback sales.
