Tag: book sales

Bookstore Sales up 2.5%

Bookstore
Bookstore by Martin Cathrae

Publishers Weekly posted an article yesterday about a rise in book sales.  While this is welcome news to any book nerd, myself included, I’m still so sad that there was such a dive in book sales to begin with.  Don’t get me wrong I love reading on my kindle, iPhone and iPad, but I miss all the bookshops that once littered malls and especially the smaller mom and pop books stores, that sold new and used books.

These were the real diamond in the rough.  I loved to be walking in a new small town and come across a bookstore selling new or used books.  Browsing through bookstores is FUN!  Even if you don’t come away with anything they give you this wonderful feeling knowing that they are there for a return visits, when next time you might find that real jewel of a book that becomes your new all-time favorite.

The article states that we hit 11.17 billion in sales last year, up from last year, but horribly down from the pre-2009 high of 17 billion.  I hope we return to this number and I hope it is soon, because I want to see new bookstores opening up all over the place for book nerd browsing!

Print Book Sales are Up!

Book Sales Up
Book Sales Up

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.

US Book Sales by Channel
US Book Sales by Channel

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!

Books Sales by Category
Books Sales by Category

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.

US Print Book Sales by Format
US Print Book Sales by Format

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!