Good News For July

Shelf Awareness reported on July bookstore sales this morning.

"Bookstore sales in July were $1.189 billion, up 7.3% from $1.108 billion in sales in July 2006, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The July results reverse many months of negative comparisons for bookstore sales. For the year to date, bookstore sales have been $8.518 billion, down 3.1% from $8.794 billion in the first seven months of 2006."

To compare total retail sales with those bookstore sales, July's retail sales were $339.2 billion, up 3.2% over July 2006. Year-to-date retail sales were $2.34 trillion, up 5.4% over the first seven months last year.

As always, the bookstore figures do not include used books, consumers who are Internet shopping from home, bookclub sales or mail order sales.