September Book Sales

Thursday’s Shelf Awareness reported on September book sales. “. . . net sales decreased 2% to $1.062 billion for 80 publishers that reported to the Association of American Publishers. Net sales for the year through September have fallen 1.5% to $7.718 billion.”

The AAP report compares September, 2008 to September, 2007. Among the categories that Shelf Awareness reported:

E-books jumped 77.8% to $5.1 million from last year to the same month this year.
Audiobooks decreased 12.3% to $18.7 million.

Adult hardcover fell 29.8% to $173.3 million.
Adult paperback decreased 8.6% to $134.7 million.
Adult mass market dropped 8.3% to $67.4 million.

Children's/YA hardcover increased 41.9% to $119.8 million.
Children's/YA paperback declined 19.1% to $51.5 million.

Religious books fell 11.8% to $76.8 million

Publishers Weekly reported on the same numbers:

The children’s hardcover segment provided some good news, with sales jumping almost 42% led by shipments of Brisingr, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake and Disney High School Musical 3 Junior Novel; all three had first printings of over 1 million. Children’s paperback sales were down 19.1%.

The strong performance of e-books continued in September, with the 13 publishers that report sales totaling revenue of $5.1 million, a 77.8% increase over last September.