July was a rough month for trade publishers that report their sales to the AAP’s StatShot program. Sales of adult trade titles dropped 13.6% in July compared to a year ago, while sales in the children/young adult category fell 10.4%.
In other areas, sales of religious books slipped 1.8%, professional book sales declined 9%, and sales of university press dipped 0.6%. Sales were unavailable for both educational categories due to insufficient reporting levels. For all of the 1,320 companies that did report, July sales were down 4.2%.
Within adult trade, July sales fell 10.3% in fiction and 18.4% in nonfiction and were down across all formats. In fiction, trade paperbacks had the biggest drop, down 13%, while digital audio had the largest decline since Spotify joined the industry, falling 12.7%. Digital audio also took a big hit in nonfiction, falling 29.9%, while trade paperback sales also suffered, falling 19.8%.
In children’s and YA, fiction sales in July dropped 12.4%, while nonfiction slipped 0.1%. In terms of format, hardcover and paperback sales fell 14.3% and 16.8%, respectively, in the month in fiction. In nonfiction, hardcover sales declined 9.7%, while paperback sales fell 4.9%.
The bad July sales results follow what was a generally soft first half of the year. With seven months now in the books, sales for all reporting companies were down 2.1%. Sales of adult books dropped 5.9% in the seven-month period and sales of children’s and YA titles were off 0.7%.
