The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today released its StatShotreport for December 2019 reflecting reported revenue for all tracked categories, including Trade (consumer publications), K-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses.
Total sales across all categories for January to December 2019 rose 1.8% as compared to the same period last year, reaching $14.8 billion.
For the month of December overall publisher revenue was up 11.3% as compared to December of 2018, coming in at $1.2 billion.
Trade (Consumer) Revenues:
Year-to-date total Trade sales were flat (+0.1%) in relation to 2018, coming in at $7.9 billion. Downloaded Audio continued to grow, with a 22.1% increase as compared to last year, reaching $576.9 million in revenue. eBooks continued to decline, down 4.2% as compared to 2018 for a total of $983.3 million. Taken collectively, physical books – Hardback, Board Book, Paperback and Mass Market – accounted for $5.8 billion, or 74.0% of total 2019 Trade revenues.
For the month of December 2019 Trade revenues were up 9.0% as compared to December 2018, with a total of $728.9 million for the month. Downloaded Audio revenues increased 8.5%, reaching $50.7 million for the month. eBook sales declined 7.6% as compared to the same month last year, coming in at $75.5 million. For the month of December, physical books – Hardback, Board Book, Paperback and Mass Market– were up 11.4%, accounting for $552.8 million.
Education Category:
Total educational book sales were up 3.7% for the full year, reaching $6.8 billion. Within the category, Higher Education had a difficult year ending 2019 with $3.0 billion in sales, down 10.7% from 2018. In contrast PreK-12 grew 24.0% to $3.2 billion due to significant adoptions.
Professional Publishing:
Professional books fell slightly, -1.8%, to $613.2 million. University Presses were down 4.0% to $48.3 million.
About the Data
Publisher net revenue, including sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, etc., is tracked monthly by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and includes revenue from about 1,360 publishers, with participation subject to change over time.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the Library of Congress (Full Text of Announcement): A new web archive collection from the Library of Congress documents the civil unrest sparked by the police murder of George ...
From an arXiv Blog Post: The recent release of AI technology that generates new text has raised serious questions among the research community. For one, “Can ChatGPT be named an ...
From a Joint Statement (via De Gruyter): ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and De Gruyter, an independent academic publisher, have today announced a content syndication partnership that will see ...
ARL: Celebrating Black History Month 2023 EveryLibrary Releases 2022 Annual Report ||| Full Text Report Germany: DFG Launches Cooperation with the OAPEN Foundation IFLA: Applications for Public Library of the ...
From an Ithaka S+R Blog Post by the Report’s Author, Makala Skinner: On Tuesday, January 31, we published the A*CENSUS II Archives Administrators Survey findings. The Archives Administrator Survey Report is ...
From the Urban Libraries Council (ULC): The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) announces today the release of its latest white paper, “Food is a Right: Libraries and Food Justice,” which addresses ...
Annual Report 2022: Highlights from the Data Curation Network arXiv Announces New Policy on ChatGPT and Similar Tools (via arXiv Blog) COPE in 2023 (via Committee on Publication Ethics) eLife’s ...
The article linked to below was today published by Insights. Title A Free Toolkit to Foster Open Access Agreements Authors Alicia Wise Information Power Lorraine Estelle Information Power Source Insights 36 ...
From the Government Publishing Office (GPO): Libraries at the University of Montana, the University of Memphis, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville have signed Memorandum of Agreements with the U.S. ...
From Fox 17 (Grand Rapids): The folks over at the Grand Rapids Public Library made a fascinating discovery while digging through their massive archives back in March 2021, and are ...
The article linked below was recently published by the International Journal of Communication. Title Knowledge Work in Platform Fact-Checking Partnerships Authors Valérie Bélair-Gagnon University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA Rebekah Larsen ...
A Guide to Communicating With Others: Messaging Apps (via Privacy International) De Gruyter Acquires Mercury Learning and Information Report by the French Committee for Open Science Working Group on Electronic ...
