AAP eBook Sales Nudge Back Up In November, As Children's Hardcovers Shine

PublishersLunch

eBook sales as reported by a small butgrowing group of publishers to the AAP remained lower than their peaks earlierin the year in November, at $77.3 million up modestly from October's reported$72.8 million. Overall, ebooks comprised 16 percent of trade sales, compared to12.6 percent in October. The peak during 2011 was February, when high ebooknumbers and low print shipments made digital 29.5 percent of the month'sreported sales. Further skewing the month-to-month and year-over-yearcomparisons, the number of publishers reporting ebook sales to the AAP keepschanging from month to month. For November, 8 more university presses havestarted reporting ebook sales, making 26 reporting publishers in all. (ColumbiaUniversity Press and Rizzoli have dropped off this month, but are expected toreport again in the future.) Last December, there were only 12 reportingpublishers.

Following the year's pattern, the gain of$30.7 million in ebook sales over last November couldn't make up for the largerdrop in print shipments, as total AAP trade sales declined $29.7 million or 5.7percent for the month. (Indeed, for the 11 reported months, overall tradedollars are down 5.8 percent compared to 2010, which isn't bad considering thedisappearance of Borders and the growth of lower-priced ebooks.)

Children's and YA hardcovers were thebiggest gainers after ebooks in the month, at net shipments of $87.2 million up27 percent compared to a year ago. That made children's hardcovers the secondlargest trade segment for the month (with ebooks once again just barely infourth place). Religious books--which we don't count as trade, but the AAPdoes--also rose slightly for the month.