Book Publisher Revenue Estimated at More than $26.23 Billion in 2017 According to Newly Released Data From Association of American Publishers

New Estimates From Association of American Publishers:

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) issued its 2018 StatShot Annual Report today which found, among other things, that the U.S. book publishing industry generated an estimated $26.23 billion in net revenue for 2017, representing 2.72 billion units. All figures represent publishers’ net revenue from tracked categories (trade, higher education course materials, preK-12 instructional materials, professional books, and university press), in all formats, from all distribution channels. These are not retailer/consumer sales figures.

Publisher revenue for trade books (fiction, non-fiction and religious presses) were flat (0.3%) increasing by $45 million in 2017 over 2016. Since 2013, publisher revenue for trade books increased by around $820 million.

StatShot Annual is based on a unique methodology that combines annual data submitted by publishers, along with market modeling, to estimate the total size of the U.S. publishing industry. It is a different report than AAP’s monthly statistics reports, which track publisher revenue comparatively on a month-to-month basis. Below is a top-level summary of the data, but the entire report is available for purchase.

Publisher Revenue in Billions 2013 – 2017

Year	Trade	Higher Ed	PreK-12	Professional	University Press	Other	Total
2013	$15.13	$4.81	$3.84	$2.97	$0.30	$0.02	$27.07
2014	$15.43	$4.85	$4.27	$3.09	$0.30	$0.00	$27.96
2015	$15.82	$4.53	$4.11	$3.05	$0.29	$0.00	$27.80
2016	$15.90	$3.96	$3.73	$2.37	$0.28	$0.04	$26.27
2017	$15.95	$3.98	$3.62	$2.35	$0.29	$0.04	$26.23

Some highlights from the report:

• Non-fiction books for adults is the category with the largest growth for publishers, with a 5.4% increase in publisher revenue from 2016 to 2017. Since 2013, revenue for the category has grown 28.4% to $6.18 billion. Nearly 150 million more adult non-fiction books were sold in 2017 than in 2013.

• Publisher revenue for adult fiction declined slightly, by -1.2% to $4.38 billion. From 2013 to 2017, this category saw only one year of revenue growth (2015).

• Both fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults saw more units sold in 2017 than in 2016, up 1.1% and 4.4% respectively. Over the past five years (2013 – 2017) publisher revenue for children’s and YA fiction has grown by 11.3% to $3.67 billion and non-fiction has declined by -2.3% to $652 million.

• Downloaded audio remained the fastest growing format, with 28.8% year-over-year growth from 2016 to 2017 and 146.2% growth over the past five years (2013 – 2017).

• More than 1 billion paperback books were sold (more than any other format in 2017) comprising 36.9% of books sold in all categories.

• For the first time publisher sales to physical and online retail channels were approximately equal at $7.6 billion and $7.5 billion respectively in 2017. Within online retail channels, 43.2% were print formats, 27% were eBooks, 16.3% were instructional materials, 10.5% were downloaded audio, and 3.1% were physical audio or a different format.

• Revenue from higher education was flat (0.5%), revenue from pre-K-12 and professional books declined in 2017 by -2.9 and -0.7% respectively.

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, News, Publishing, Reports