Do you know that statistics about book sales and industry trends can be helpful when considering your professional plans and setting your direction for the future?
But here’s one problem:
It’s hard to find good resources that would cover all the most important statistics about book sales in one place.
That’s why:
…I’ve pulled together some of the most interesting and relevant book sales statistics, facts, and trends that you should know if you’re involved in this market.
Looking at current trends can help you set realistic goals for the future.
Contents
Physical Books vs. Digital Books
Self Published Books Stats
Audiobooks Statistics
Amazon Book Sales Statistics
What are the Most Popular Genres?
Book Reading Demographics
Access to Technology
What Does This All Mean?
Physical Books vs. Digital Books
It might seem that most everyone reads e-books on their tablet these days, but surprisingly, sales of digital books are down. Recent statisticsshow that e-books brought in $771 million in the US market between January and September 2018.Compare that to $800 million in 2017.
For early 2019, e-book sales continued to decline, going down nearly 5% in revenue, having brought in only $244 million in sales in the first three months of the year. This was $10 million less than in the same quarter of 2018.
Hard copy book sales for the month of August (2019) made up about 80% of all total book sales. This includes paperback, hardback, and children’s books.
For the first half of 2019, individual unit book sales were down from 2018, when a total of about 675 million print books were sold in the US.
Board books are the only exception to this, showing a +19% growth in sales revenue from last year!
Self Published Books Stats
In both hard copy and digital formats, self-published books have long been marginalized.
Nowadays, with more accessible printing options and digital publishing, they have become a legitimate niche and are here to stay.
Self-publishing has become a viable option for writers of all genres who chose to skip the search for a well-known publisher.
By 2017, over 1 million books had been self-published in both digital and print formats. Many independent creatives and freelance writers are finding financial success in platforms such as Smashwords, an independent distributor of e-books.
In 2018over 507,000 e-books were published representing over 142,000 independent authors. Independent authors are responsible for the marketing and distribution of their books. Without the help of the big publishers, they have to work for every sale. “Print on demand options allow independent sellers to print hard copies of their books as orders come in, eliminating large up-front investment for print copies.” Melinda Dawson, Senior Editor whose goal is providing instant help in response to “write my paper for me ” requests. The development of online platforms such as Smashwords and, of course, Amazon.com has made online marketing and digital distribution more accessible for independent writers.
Some older studies estimate that self-published books have as much as a 30% market share of all digital ebook downloads.
Audiobooks Statistics
Sales of audiobooks are skyrocketing in recent years! Audiobooks are the biggest book industry trend for the last 7 years.
According to a report published in June of 2019 by the Audio Publishers Association, audiobook sales increased by nearly 25% between 2017 and 2018 and total sales approached nearly $1 billion!
Most audiobooks are sold digitally. Over 90% of audiobooks are downloaded from the internet.
There were over 44,500 audiobooks produced in 2018, an increase of over 5% from the year before.
Amazon Book Sales Statistics
According to One Click Retail, Amazon.com sold $4.3 billion more in hard copy books compared to e-books in 2016.
As of 2016, it is estimated that self-published books make up around 60% of the ebooks offered on Kindle Unlimited by Amazon.com
Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, is the largest audiobook producer and retailer in North America and offers over 100,000 unique titles.
What are the Most Popular Genres?
Adult non-fiction revenue has grown an amazing 22.8% in the last five years!
Young adult non-fiction has grown even more, with revenues’ growing nearly 40% in the same amount of time!
According to Geoff Affleck, the top five selling categories for hard copy books on Amazon.com are:
Memoirs and Biographies
Self Help
Religion and Spirituality
Health, Fitness, and Dieting
Politics and Social Science
Meanwhile, for e-books the most popular categories are:
Religion and Spirituality
Biographies and Memoirs
Business and Money
Self Help
Cookbooks, food, and Vine
According to Book Ad Report, the following sub-genres make the most money:
Romance and Erotica ($1.44 billion)
Crime and Mystery ($728.2 million)
Religious/Inspirational ($720 million)
Science Fiction and Fantasy books ($590.2 million)
Children and Young Adult ($160 million)
Horror ($79.6 million)
“It’s interesting to note that most successful bestselling titles in the ebook category are fiction, while non-fiction dominates for hard copy sales.” Frank Nguyen, Marketing Specialist at Studicus.
Book Reading Demographics
We can’t take a look at book sales and statistics without taking a look at the facts of who is doing the reading.
Demographics are just as important as sales numbers if you want to use this information for your work.
So, who is reading in the US?
In October of 2019, over 80% of adults, age 18 to 29, have read at least one book in the previous year. Older adults, possibly because they are not spending as much time studying and more time working, read slightly less.
In the last year, between 67% and 72% of adults 30 and up (depending on the age bracket) claim to have read at least one book.
Share of adults who have read a book in any format in the last 12 months in the United States in 2019, by age group
Over 80% of people who read books have at least some college education, if not a degree.
In early 2019, found that 27% of adults have not read any books at all in the last year.
Those who have not read in the past year are less likely to have any college education and are most likely to make $30,000 a year or less.
Access to Technology
Hard copy, printed versions are by far the best selling and most popular form of books. 65% of adults say they have recently read a printed version of a book.
At least 28% of adult readers enjoy both print and digital versions of published books.
There are over 90.5 million e-reading devices in the US!
Over 50% of the US population has a tablet.
78% have a laptop or desktop computer. And of those, 77% have an active internet service subscription.
All of this information means that between e-readers, tablets, household computers (not to mention the 265.9 million smartphones in the US), and widely available internet access – digital books and audiobooks have become a normal way to enjoy books.
What Does This All Mean?
All of these statistics for book sales, facts, and trends can be easily summed up with the following conclusions:
Printed books are still going strong and continue to dominate the industry.
Non-fiction is hugely popular right now, especially in printed formats.
Fiction is more popular for digital downloads and e-readers.
Audiobooks, especially in digital format, are the fastest-growing product in the publishing industry.
Memoirs, biographies, romance, and suspenseful thrillers are the most popular genres in both print and digital editions.
Self-publishing is a very viable option for independent authors.
With over 675 million books printed last year, booming audiobook sales, and a burgeoning market share for independent writers, the publishing industry is going strong.
We can expect a whole new slew of studies to help us analyze and understand this huge and continuously evolving market.
The only database with reasonably accurate information is Nielsen BookScan, which reports point-of-sale data, but even that claims to represent only 75% of all retail sales.
But since then, the print book industry has been making a comeback. Going from 591 million physical books sold in 2012 to 788.7 million in 2022, print book sales grew 33.45% over this period.
Data showing how many books were sold in 2022 revealed that the printed book market remains healthy: a total of 788.7 million units were sold that year among outlets which reported to the source.
The bestselling book genre is romance and the most profitable fiction book genre. Religious & inspirational books are the most popular non-fiction genre, whilst thrillers are the most popular audiobooks.
Overall, industry revenue is expected to decrease at an annualized rate of 2.1% to $29.8 billion over the five years to 2022, including a decline of 0.2% 2022 alone....
The actual decline in used bookstores did indeed occur for economic reasons. But these reasons are related to the value or lack thereof in used books far more than to the obvious rises in rent. The fact is paperback books and discounted hardbacks have virtually eliminated a general interest in used books.
The seeds of the current problems were sown in the years of the pandemic, when sales of print books unexpectedly rose, increasing demand while people were leaving manufacturing jobs in droves that led to labor shortages in the printing and papermaking businesses.
Research suggests that the “average” self-published, digital-only book sells about 250 copies in its lifetime. By comparison, the average traditionally published book sells 3,000 copies, but as I mentioned above, only about 250-300 of those sales happen in the first year.
According to Guinness World Records as of 1995, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.
Reliable sources of statistics may include government and technical reports, scholarly journal articles, conference papers, white papers, and professional organizations.
Like most mass media, commercial publishing is dominated by a handful of major corporations with ties to international media conglomerates. ... The Organization and Ownership of the Book Industry.
There is a bright future for printed books, a recent survey finds. According to the results, printed books will continue to be important, relevant, interesting and still very much appreciated compared to e-books and audiobooks.
Today, in the age of the Internet, this thinking is becoming dominant that when something is required, we will take the help of the Internet. Technology is undoubtedly an important source of information for us, but it is not a way to replace books.”
“There is no book shortage as such at the moment because the nature of the publishing cycle is that these books are planned many months ahead,” Daunt says.
The survey results showed that adults within this age category were more likely than older respondents to have read a book within the last twelve months. ...
Within the book publishing industry, it is agreed that the odds of an author getting their work published stands between 1% and 2%. Despite this low number, more than 95% of manuscripts received by publishers and agents are below the level the standard required.
In 2021, the market size of the bookstore industry is $9.5 billion, an amount that had been decreasing at a 5.7% rate every year, on average, starting from 2016. This decline in revenue is due to many factors, namely, rising competition from online retailers and an increasing popularity of e-books.
Two major factors have contributed to the 9.6% decrease in sales at bookstores since 2007: the growing popularity of e-books, and Borders going out of business. Both have caused serious drops in the number of bookstore sales, though competition with online retailers like Amazon is another major factor.
Here, the book isn't selling because it isn't appealing to readers. The title is vague. The cover looks amateurish or is obviously from a template. The quality of the text is poor: it's not ready for market, it's a rough first draft, the prose is hard to read, there are lots of errors, and so on.
Amazon is the largest book retailer in the world with a catalog that includes more than 33 million titles, and they will ship them just about anywhere. But it's the actual stores that interest us.
Total book reading is declining significantly, although not at the rate of literary reading. The percentage of the U.S. adult population reading any books has declined by -7 percent over the past decade. dropped dramatically over the past 20 years. Less than half of the adult American population now reads literature.
“Although there is a widespread belief that publishing weathered the 1981-82 recession well, figures from the Association of American Publishers show virtually no growth for trade book sales in that year, compared with an average of 13.3 percent in the years since 1982.”
In terms of countries, the United States control over 24.7% of all global book sales. The USA is followed by China, which accounts for 19.4% of all sales, and Germany with 9.2%. As of 2023, the top 5 biggest book markets control 66.71% of all global book sales.
They make simple grammar mistakes and sometimes big grammar mistakes, i.e., by not hiring a copy editor before submitting it for self-publishing. Books have categories, or genres, and too often emerging authors do not study the genre they've selected or they change genres in the middle of writing.
Will Books Be Replaced by Future Technology? Technology cannot entirely replace books, but there will be a significant reduction in physical books in the world. The world is going fully digital, and everyone now uses technology to complete several tasks, including reading.
U.S. print book sales rose by 67.8 million in 2021, with adult fiction sales rising 25.5% and adult nonfiction sales rising 4.4%, according to data gathered by market research firm NPD and reported by Publishers Weekly.
It's something fresh and interesting. You must find an idea that will get readers excited to pick up your book. This goes for fiction, nonfiction, advice, how-to, and memoir. A small idea for a book results in small sales.
Of course, there's still a chance to earn money, although it may not be enough to quit your day job. Even still, many aspiring writers want to know how many books they need to publish to start earning an income. You need to publish one book to make money.
These are the most common book sizes for most fiction and nonfiction books. The two most popular sizes in the U.S. are 5.5” by 8.5” (“digest”) and 6” by 9”.
Textbooks are printed in batches called print runs, printings, or impressions. The print run of a textbook is listed on the copyright page within a numeric, or sometimes alphanumeric, string. Publishers may use differing protocols to denote a textbook's print run.
Thus I usually say that the “average” book sells 10,000 copies with a major publisher. But if all their books only sold 10,000 copies, they might struggle financially. There have to be exceptions to the rule. Be aware that the word average means that for every book that sells 15,000, there is one that sells 5,000.
One very simple method of finding an approximate value of a book is to search for similar copies on AbeBooks.com and see what prices are being asked. The sellers on AbeBooks.com offer for sale new, used, rare and out-of-print books, and we have millions of used and rare books available for purchase.
"We're really happy to make it easy and free for them to see geographical BookScan data updated weekly, as well as historical Amazon bestsellers rank, for their books.
In determining the value of a book there are three basic elements: 1) rarity, 2) condition, and, 3) demand. Books with the most value normally have all three of these elements, and the loss of any will likely result in a loss of value. Age of the book is not always a key factor in value.
The category and window of your release all significantly impact the number of copies required to hit the NYT bestseller list, but 5,000 copies during any one-week period is the minimum.
Under those guidelines, a prose work may be reproduced in its entirety if it is less than 2500 words in length. If the work exceeds such length, the reproduced excerpt may not exceed 1000 words, or 10% of the work, whichever is less.
Most self-published authors sell 250 books or less, regardless of how many different books they write. Traditionally published books sell around 3,000 copies on average, with only 250 of those sales in the first year. It's rare that books sell over 100,000 copies and even rarer to sell more than a million.
Want to hit top 10? You'll need to sell roughly 300 for print, or 2,000+ copies for combined formats. Those numbers aren't exactly set in stone, but they're a pretty close approximation. To get onto Amazon's Bestseller Top 100 radar across all titles you're usually looking at about 1,000 sales of your book.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the old books have small to no value to collectors. Even though some specific books used to be scarce in a region, purchasing books online, both internationally and nationally, has made books' value go down.
Either way, paperback books are certainly worth something, and their value depends on so many different factors. If you're interested in learning the worth of your paperback books, you might consider speaking with a rare book dealer or having them appraised.
The book value of an asset refers to its cost minus depreciation over time. It is the value of an asset based on its balance sheet. The fair value of an asset reflects its market price; the price agreed upon between a buyer and seller.
In most cases, you should not pay a publisher to publish your work. If a publisher is seeking a payment, this means that you are likely dealing with a 'vanity publisher. ' This means that the publisher is intending to make their profit from you, not from selling your book, which is not ideal.
It covers approximately 85 percent of trade print books sold in the U.S., through direct reporting from all major retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, independent bookstores, and many others.
Self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free with Kindle Direct Publishing, and reach millions of readers on Amazon. Get to market fast. Publishing takes less than 5 minutes and your book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 72 hours.
Introduction: My name is Twana Towne Ret, I am a famous, talented, joyous, perfect, powerful, inquisitive, lovely person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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Do you know that statistics about book sales and industry trends can be helpful when considering your professional plans and setting your direction for the future?
