The final AAP StatShot report for 2025 found small sales increases in the children’s/young adult and religion books segments compared to 2024, and a slight decline in sales of adult books.

According to the report, which is based on financial results from 1,324 publishers, sales in the children’s/YA category inched up 1%, to $2.47 billion, while sales of religion books rose 2.9%, to $926 million. Sales of adult books slipped 1.6%, to $6.37 billion.

In other categories, sales of professional books fell 6.5%, while sales from university presses rose 1.8%. Revenue in the "other" segment increased 5.9%, to $4.29 billion. As has been the case for most of the year, the "other" category includes results from publishers of higher education course materials and PreK-12 instructional materials since not enough publishers in either category provided information to meet AAP threshold requirements and be broken out separately.

Based on results from all reporting publishers, the AAP put total sales at $14.64 billion last year, up 1.1% from 2024.

Within the adult books category, fiction sales slipped 0.8% while nonfiction sales fell 2.5%. Fiction sales were particularly hurt by a decline in sales of trade paperbacks, which fell 7%, offsetting a 5.7% increase in hardcover sales. Digital audio had a solid year in the category with sales up 7.6%, while e-book sales were flat.

In adult nonfiction, sales in both digital formats fell last year, down 5.9% for digital audiobooks and 2% for e-books. Similar to fiction, trade paperback sales fell, down 4.3%, while hardcover sales rose, up 2%.

On the children’s/YA side, sales of fiction inched ahead 0.2%, while sales in the much smaller nonfiction category rose 4.8%. For the entire category, trade paperbacks had the best print performance with sales up 2.1%, offsetting a slight decline in hardcover sales, which slipped 0.8%. Digital audio had a good year with sales up 6.1% and e-book sales increased 1.1%. Still, digital sales represented a relatively small slice of revenue for children’s publishers, accounting for 7.7% of sales last year, while sales of e-books and digital audio represented nearly 29% of adult book sales.

Religion book publishers remained heavily print-dependent with digital representing just under 11% of total sales last year. Hardcovers accounted for more than 62% of segment sales and trade paperbacks generated 17% of revenue.

The AAP will release estimates for the full size of the industry later this year.