Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina, a 2019 image, the first of five years of StatShot data now recalculated by Industry Insight for the Association of American Publishers. Image – Getty: J. Michael Jones
By Porter Anderson, Editor in Chief | @Porter_Anderson
A 95% confidence level on recalculated reports
IIn the StatShot annual report for calendar year 2023 released today (August 22), the Association of American Publishers (AAP) reports revenue of $29.9 billion for the U.S. publishing industry from books and course materials in print and digital formats – up from the $28.10 billion reported last year. The organization says this “represents a marginal decrease of 0.8 percent compared to the final 2022 figures.”
“This is an increase of 6.1 percent over the pre-pandemic total of $28.2 billion recorded in 2019.” Behind these figures lies a change from the figures of the last five years.
The AAP now has the data for the annual and monthly reports compiled by the same company called Industry Insights.
As the company puts it: “Industry Insights analyzed a wide range of data sources, including U.S. Census data, direct survey responses, AAP’s historical StatShot survey data and reports, Bowker’s Books In Print dataset, Circana’s BookScan tools, self-publishing and digital publishing trends, government economic data, and various publicly available articles and information sources related to the U.S. publishing industry and individual publishers.
“Based on this analysis, Industry Insight determined that previous industry estimates were too low.
Source: Association of American Publishers (AAP), August 21, 2024
“As a result, Industry Insights has recalculated the industry estimates, resulting in higher numbers for each year except 2021. The industry estimate results are accurate at a 95 percent confidence level, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 to 10 percentage points.”
On the right, you can see industry revenues for the last five years in the United States by category, recalculated by Industry Insights.
Especially in an election season when Americans are bombarded with polling data from all sides, anyone can tell you that a margin of error of plus or minus 6 to 10 points is not nothing. In fact, that’s a pretty big margin of error. This revision of the approach and the five-year numbers may also be why the 2023 annual report will be released about three months later in the year than the 2022 report, which was released last year.
Because our Publish perspectives Because the professional readership is international and influenced by many more factors than the U.S. market, the level of detail of the adjustments behind the report is less important than a sense of general trends. The report itself, at 100 pages, is sold by the organization for $495.
Our approach here is to list some of the most important points in the report, not necessarily in the order in which they were presented to us. We invite you to ask the Association of American Publishers about any points you feel require special explanation, particularly in light of this change in approach by Industry Insights when it took over the annual report.
Estimated industry sales points
The trade sector (trading books), the largest category of U.S. industry, fell 1.4 percent to an estimated $18.7 billion. Beyond trade:
- Revenue in the higher education sector increased by 1.5 percent to $3.9 billion.
- The share of PreK-12 education increased 0.3 percent to $5.2 billion.
- The share of technical books rose by 1.5 percent to 1.7 billion dollars.
- University presses recorded a decline of 9.8 percent to $0.6 billion.
Trade digital formats
- In the trade, digital formats are combined (digital audio formats And The share of e-books in total sales in 2023 was 23 percent, an increase of 9.4 percent over the previous year.
- Trade in digital audio files (excluding e-books) reportedly “increased again this year, by 14.2 percent to $2.3 billion,” while trade in e-books alone saw a further, albeit slight, decline: by 0.2 percent to $2.4 billion.
- In contrast, in 2023, hardcover revenue surpassed paperback revenue, the report said. Hardcover revenue rose 1.1 percent to $8.0 billion, while paperback revenue declined 4.4 percent to $7.7 billion.
Press
“In the industry as a whole,” the AAP notes, “print formats accounted for 55 percent of total sales in 2023, a decrease of 2 percent from the previous year. In retail, print formats accounted for 72 percent of total sales in 2023, a decrease of 0.8 percent from the previous year.”
Retail channels
Source: Association of American Publishers (AAP), August 21, 2024
For publishers’ sales, online distribution channels are the largest category, which is no surprise to many who work in the American market. This will not appease those who have a strong attachment to brick-and-mortar stores for nostalgic or other reasons, but of course it was the American market’s digital retail capacity that provided a vehicle for strong sales during pandemic conditions, and it is arguable that some consumers new to online retail may have found a permanent new level of trust in it during these years.
However, the fact that these channels are digital does not mean that the majority of the product is digital. In 2023, 54 percent of total sales came from print formats and 14 percent of total sales came from digital formats.
Online retail grew 5.0 percent to $11 billion in 2023. “Publishers’ revenue through online retail channels was more than double that of physical retail channels, which was $5.5 billion, a year-over-year decline of 0.9 percent,” the report said.
Direct sales increased 2.1 percent to $4.9 billion in 2023.
Notes on methodology
Regarding the methodology, the AAP writes: “The StatShot Annual Report for calendar year 2023 is the independent work of Industry Insights, an expert research and data analytics firm. The report provides a valuable financial overview of the book publishing industry by providing estimated and aggregated revenues as well as reported unit sales.
You can find more industry statistics from Publishing Perspectives here, more on the Association of American Publishers here, more of our coverage of AAP StatShot reports here, and more on the U.S. market here.
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