A Strong Year for Consumer Book Sales

While 2018 numbers brought smiles to faces at trade book houses, publishers in other segments suffered significant declines in sales.

On Monday, the Association of American Publishers reported “publisher revenue in 2018 for all tracked categories (Trade, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses) was relatively flat at $14.55 billion (-0.4%) with a decrease of $57.0 million compared to 2017.” As Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer notes, the category with the most to cheer about was adult trade.

“Adult trade had the largest gain in the year, with sales from reporting publishers up a very healthy 5.1% over 2017, to $5.13 billion,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “Sales of religious books rose 4.5% in the year and sales in the children’s/young adult category increased 3.3% in the year – those are the segments which AAP classifies together as adult trade (i.e., consumer) books. And yes, you can probably pin a good chunk of that gain on Michelle Obama, along with a range of Trump books.”

While 2018 numbers brought smiles to faces at trade book houses, publishers in other segments suffered significant declines in sales.

“The two major educational publishing segments—higher education course materials and pre-K–12 instructional materials—had revenue declines of 7.2% and 4.6%, respectively. Sales of professional books dropped 2.7%, and the small university press segment had the largest revenue decline, with sales down 9.5%, to $50.3 million,” Albanese reports.

Every Friday, CCC’s “Beyond the Book” speaks with the editors and reporters of “Publishers Weekly” for an early look at the news that publishers, editors, authors, agents and librarians will be talking about when they return to work on Monday.