The U.S. publishing industry has five general markets, or categories: Trade (fiction, non-fiction and religious content for adult and young consumers), K-12 School, Higher Education, Professional (journals, databases and other digital content for professionals in science, medicine, business, law and the humanities) and Scholarly.
Highlights for each category below reflect all print and digital formats.
Highlights:
The Trade market has shown resiliency in the midst of a challenging economy and significant changes in what it produces and where its works are sold. (Note: this edition of BookStats does not include results from 2011, which has seen a surge in e-book sales.)
From 2008-2010, net sales revenue for Trade-category publishers has grown 5.8%; revenue for 2010 is $13.944 Billion.
Overall net unit sales for Trade publishers increased over the three years by 4.5% with 2.26B units sold in 2010.
Adult Fiction sales remained strong and showed growth over all three years: overall net sales revenue increased by 9.7% and net unit sales by 3.5%. Adult Non-Fiction grew as well over the same period by 3.5%.
Trade Juvenile (children, teens, young adults) sales fared well, gaining 7.1% over the three years in net sales revenue and 12.1% increases in net unit sales.
Religion (religious books and Bibles) saw movement from 2008-2010: 0.5% in net sales revenue and 1.1% in net unit sales. Overall net sales value for the Religion market in 2010 is $1.35 Billion with 204 Million net unit sales.
K-12 School covers a vast range of learning tools for students and teachers at America’s public and private schools and is the second largest U.S. publishing category based on net sales volume. Unlike other categories, K-12 School is affected by changes in federal and state funding and the legacy state adoption market systems.
2010 net sales revenue for this category is $5.51 Billion. The category showed a -12.4% decline from 2008-2009 but rebounded in 2009-2010 with a +7.1% increase. This translates to a change in net sales value over the three-year period of -6.2%.
Impressive growth in Higher Education over the past three years is one of the biggest stories in the U.S. publishing industry. Higher Education publishers have been actively developing, producing and marketing the next generation of premium multiplatform learning solutions offering students improved performance, more effective comprehension and assessment tools and more cost-effective options. Additionally, there has been expansion in the U.S. college and university system, particularly in the community colleges segment.
Higher Education posted a significant 23.1% increase in net sales revenue for publishers over the three years, with steady annual growth of 15.5% and 6.6% respectively. Net revenue for the category in 2010 is $4.55 Billion.
Professional publishing provides print and digital content for practitioners, clinicians and other working in medicine, law, business, science, technology, the humanities and social sciences. One reason for this market’s resiliency through the 2008-2010 period has been its digitization of content; this has created more discoverability and opened up new markets.
Three-year Professional publishing net sales revenue grew by 6.3%; this includes 1.9% growth from 2008-2009 followed by 4.3% growth from 2009-2010. Revenue for 2010 is $3.75 Billion.
Net unit sales virtually match the revenue track: total net units increased by 6.3% for the three-year window; 2008-2009 grew by 1.6% and 2009-2010 by 4.6%. Total net units sold were 171 Million.
Scholarly publishing covers print and digital content published by scholarly societies, commercial publishers and university presses for those involved in primary research in academic, corporate or government settings. This market saw net sales revenue grow while net unit sales declined very slightly.
Scholarly market net revenue for 2010 is $191 Million, a 4.7% increase from 2008.
Net unit sales for 2010 is 5.64 Million, a -3.4% decline over the three-year period. This includes a -5.1% change for 2008-2009 paired with a +1.8% gain for 2009-2010.