October Sales Figures Are In

January-October Book Sales 2010 vs. 2011 [Credit: AAP via GalleyCat]

The AAP has just released updated sales figures for the publishing trade through October, which shows a continuing trend toward digital. While overall revenue is down slightly for the year (-4.5%), ebooks once again gave the strongest showing with an increase of 131% over the same period last year, while all print sectors were down (religious titles are not broken out between print and digital, so the ratio here is unknown). Digital audio downloads also posted a gain of 28.8%, while their equivalent physical editions fell by 10.6%.

For October alone, ebooks actually lost a bit of traction, showing only a "modest" +81.2% gain, their worst month this year, and the first drop below a 100% gain. For the record, here are the monthly gains for ebooks so far this year:

• January: +115.8
• February: +202.3
• March: +145.7
• April: +157.5
• May: +146.9
• June: +167
• July: +105.3
• August: +116.5
• September: +100.9
• October: +81.2

However, while digital continues to climb, it should be remembered that it still makes up a fraction of the overall book market, with all sectors still including in the single ebook figure while print is divided out among its several categories. The chart below gives a bigger picture of the current situation, showing ebook sales gaining rapidly, but as yet accounting for barely 20% of total sales. Still, it's the only one that's going up, and that's not likely to change for at least a few more years.

Total Sales Volume YTD 2010 vs. 2011 [Credit: paidContent.org]