Good news, according to Publisher’s Weekly the sales of print books are up. Not dramatically, but still this is good news. For the second year in a row sales are up. 2.8% over last year and the year before that it was up 2.4%. Thats the right direction!
So, whats driving the growth? Independent and chain bookstores, as well as Amazon lead the growth with an increase of 5.4%, which offset a drop of 8.8% from mass retailers like Walmart. Looks like people are turing away from buying their books at Target and increasingly buying at Amazon.
I have to say I love getting a view of these numbers. As a reader and someone who wants to promote reading, this is great news. The article at Publisher’s Weekly had some analysis and tables, but I think seeing these numbers graphed helps tell the story better.
Below is the sales broken out by Category. We can see the fall in 2014 in Adult nonfiction and the increase again in 2015, although not quite to the point it was in 2013. Thats a shame, I love nonfiction. Fantastic to see Juvenile non fiction grow like this year over year. A 11.7% increase year-over-year!
One more graph and then I’m done, promise. I read all formats of books, print, audio, ebook, etc. But here is the sales for the last 3 years broken out for your perusal.
I’m very happy to see hardcover sales up, this means, to me at least, that people are purchasing copies to keep and re-read. They are building their libraries, hopefully, not just for themselves but for everyone in their family to enjoy. Board books are up the most at 14.5% year-over-year. This is very encouraging. This means to me, that people are buying books to read to their very small children. Start them young on a hobby (nay life choice) that will forever change them for the better!