Rebounding from the worst month of the 2020 sales collapse, April bookstore sales soared 204% over last year, jumping to $514 million, from $169 million in April 2020. Despite the huge improvement, April bookstore sales were still 21% below sales in April 2019.

The increase in bookstore sales was in keeping with the improvement in the retail sector in general in April, which had a 53.5% sales increase in the month.

For the first four months of 2021, bookstore sales were up 8.4% from the comparable period in 2020, rising to $2.34 billion. Sales for all of retail increased 23%.

This story has been updated.