News

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released the StatShot Annual report covering the calendar year 2025, estimating that the U.S. publishing industry generated $33.4 billion in aggregate publishing revenue for books and course materials across print and digital formats. U.S. Publishing revenue is up 2.5% as compared to $32.5 billion in revenue in 2024, and up 16.1% when comparing 2021 to 2025.

“This year’s report reflects a healthy and agile publishing industry,” commented Syreeta Swann, Chief Operating Officer, Association of American Publishers. “Print formats continue to dominate Trade publishing, accounting for 76.3% of Trade revenue, while Digital Audio and digital course materials remain strong.”

Calendar Year 2025 StatShot Annual Report Highlights:

• During 2025, Trade (consumer books) revenue increased by 2.7% to an estimated $21.7 billion in 2025.
• Within Trade:
  • Religious Presses had the largest gain, up 9.3% to $2.2 billion, continuing an upward trend.
  • Adult Fiction grew 3.9% to $7.1 billion.
  • Adult Non-Fiction increased 1.3% to $6.0 billion.
  • Children’s & Young Adult Fiction increased 0.9% to $5.4 billion.
  • Children’s & Young Adult Non-Fiction grew 0.3% to $1.0 billion.
• Higher Education Course Materials increased by 8.5% to $4.7 billion.
• PreK-12 Instructional Materials decreased 2.5% to $5.2 billion.
• Professional & Scholarly (excluding Journals) decreased 1.2% to $1.3 billion.
• University Presses increased 4.9% to $368 million.

Print

Overall, print formats (Hardback, Paperback, Mass Market, and Special Bindings) accounted for 50.6% of publishers’ revenue. During the year, revenue from Hardbacks climbed 3.9% to $8.2 billion, while Paperbacks increased 2.1% to $8.0 billion.

Within Trade, the Hardback and Paperback formats together accounted for nearly three-quarters of publisher’s revenue (73.1%), maintaining their position as the most popular formats with $8.0 billion and $7.8 billion in revenue, respectively. Year over year, Hardbacks increased 3.9% and Paperbacks increased 2.0%.

Digital

In the industry overall, digital formats (Digital Audio and eBooks) accounted for 14.2% of all revenue in 2025, representing a revenue increase of 4.3% from 2024. Digital Audio increased 5.3% to $2.5 billion in 2025, and eBooks increased 3.2% to $2.2 billion.

Within Trade, digital formats accounted for 21.5% of overall revenue in 2025, returning a revenue increase of 4.2% from the previous year. Digital Audio revenue for Trade increased 5.3% while eBooks increased 3.0% in 2025.

Channels

The report provides data for a variety of channels, with publisher sales via Online Retail growing 3.1% on a year-over-year basis and comprising the largest category at $12.3 billion. During the year, Physical Retail revenue increased 7.2% to $6.7 billion. Intermediary channel revenue declined 0.6% to $4.4 billion compared to 2024.

Methodology

The Calendar Year 2025 StatShot Annual report is the independent work of Industry Insights, Inc., an expert research and data analytics firm. The report offers a valuable financial overview of the book publishing industry by reporting estimated and aggregated revenue and reported unit sales. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

For the calendar year 2025 report, Industry Insights conducted a comprehensive, multistep analysis using government statistics, publisher-reported data, historical AAP research, independent market benchmarks, and relevant industry research. Primary inputs included data from the U.S. Census Bureau, submissions from publishers participating in StatShot Annual, and historical StatShot Monthly and StatShot Annual results from AAP. Additional reference points included Bowker’s Books In Print database, Circana BookScan and Circana PubTrack Digital market measurement services, research concerning independent and self-publishing activity, public-company financial filings, and other relevant publishing-market information.

All participants were asked to report on all five years covered by this report. This edition accounts for both participation changes and restatements for each year included.

About AAP

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize the publication of creative and intellectual expression in support of a vibrant, imaginative, and informed democracy. As essential participants in local markets and the global economy, our members invest in and inspire the exchange of ideas, transforming the world we live in one word at a time. AAP members include large, small, independent, educational, and scholarly houses who collectively publish the world’s preeminent authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Newbery Medal, Man Booker Prize, Caldecott Medal, and Nobel Prize. Learn more at publishers.org.

Student Watch’s annual study reports that average student spending on college course materials, including textbooks and digital materials, was just $338 for the 2025-2026 academic year. The figure represents a dramatic decline of 44% as compared to student spending in the category ten years ago.

“Since about 2014, the role of digital in the course material space has really grown,” said Lacey Wallace, Research Analyst for the National Association of College Stores, which produces the Student Watch Report. “This year about 40 percent of purchased course materials were digital, compared to about 38 percent last year. Digital course materials can save students money because they’re often cheaper than print alternatives.”

Wallace underscored the role that Affordable Access programs have played in increasing affordability, adding, “Many Affordable Access programs are digital first, so they can save students money.”

Students Prefer Digital Course Materials Like Affordable Access

Wallace also noted the continued popularity of digital course materials among students, saying, “For the third year in a row students say they prefer digital materials over print. They really like to be able to access their materials across multiple devices, and do it pretty seamlessly.”

She also reported that Affordable Access programs were particularly popular, saying, “Two thirds of students said getting their materials through the Access programs was better than purchasing or renting.”

Affordable Access Programs Contribute to Student Success 

Multiple research studies have found that students who participate in Affordable Access programs are both more successful and less likely to withdraw, and experience increases in their final grades. In 2025, an independent report found that 84% of students enrolled in Affordable Access programs felt better prepared for their courses, and 81% of students indicated that these programs positively impacted their academic success.

What is Affordable Access?

Affordable Access Programs provide students with access to high-quality course materials on or before the first day of class at a significantly discounted price. Students pay for materials when paying tuition and fees and can use loans, grants or scholarships rather than paying out of pocket.

Student Watch Methodology

This year’s Student Watch report surveyed over 12,000 students across 30 higher education institutions.

Trade (Consumer Book) Revenues Up 7.6% for Month of May, and Up 2.3% Year-to-Date

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its StatShot report covering May 2026, reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Education (combines PreK-12 Instructional Materials and Higher Education Course Materials), and Professional & Scholarly Publishing.

Total revenue across all categories for May 2026 was up 6.8% as compared to May 2025, coming in at $931.1 million. Year-to-date revenues were up 2.6%, at $4.7 billion.

Trade (Consumer Books) Revenues

May

Trade (Consumer Books) revenues were up 7.6% in May at $799.5 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of May, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were up 7.4%, coming in at $281.5 million; Paperbacks were up 10.4%, with $290.8 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 73.8% to $2.5 million; and Special Bindings were up 25%, with $18.9 million in revenue. 

eBook revenues were down nearly 1% at $84.2 million for the month, and revenues from the Digital Audio format were up 13.0% for May, coming in at $100.7 million in revenue. Physical Audio revenues were up 16.3%, coming in at $500 thousand.

Year-to-date

Trade revenues were up 2.3% at $3.8 billion for the year. Hardback revenues were down 3.2%, coming in at $1.3 billion; Paperbacks were up 6.6%, with $1.4 billion in revenue; Mass Market was down 75.6% to $10.1 million; and Special Bindings were up 26.1%, with $94.6 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were down 3.5% compared to 2025, for a total of $429.7 million. The Digital Audio format was up 14.5%, coming in at $500.4 million in revenue. Physical Audio revenues were down 6.3%, coming in at $2.2 million.

Religious Presses Up 9.3% In May

Religious Press revenues were up 9.3% compared to the same month in 2025, coming in at $69 million. Hardback revenues were up 4.9% to $38.8 million in revenue, Paperback revenues were up 27.8% to $13.8 million, eBook revenues were up 23.5% coming in at $4.4 million, and Digital Audio revenues were up 8.8% at $4.1 million.

On a year-to-date basis, Religious press revenues were up 0.9% during the first five months of 2026, coming in at $351.1 million. Hardback revenues were down 2.6% to $205.4 million in revenue, Paperback revenues were up 7.3% to $68.2 million, eBook revenues were up 3.6% at $21.5 million, and Digital Audio revenues were up 2.9% at $20.5 million.

Professional & Scholarly Publishing Down 3.3% for May 2026

Professional & Scholarly Publishing, including business, medical, law, technical, scientific, and other books, was down 3.3% for May of 2026, coming in at $30 million. The category was up 2.8% for the first five months of the year, coming in at $166.6 million.

Education Materials (combines PreK-12 Instructional Materials and Higher Education Course Materials) Up 1.1% for May 2026

During May 2026, revenues from Education Materials were $88.9 million, up 1.1% compared with May 2025. Year-to-date, Education Materials revenues were $672.7 million, up 3.2% compared to the first five months of 2025.

AAP’s StatShot

AAP StatShot reports the monthly and yearly net revenue of publishing houses from U.S. sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, and other channels. StatShot draws revenue data from more than 1,416 publishers, although participation may fluctuate slightly from report to report.

StatShot reports are designed to give ongoing revenue snapshots across publishing sectors using the best data currently available. The reports reflect participants’ most recent reported revenue for current and previous periods, enabling readers to compare revenue on both a month-to-month and year-to-year basis within a given StatShot report.

Monthly and yearly StatShot reports may not align completely across reporting periods, because: a) The pool of StatShot participants may fluctuate from report to report; and b) Like any business, it is common accounting practice for publishing houses to update and restate their previously reported revenue data. If, for example, a business learns that its revenues were greater in a given year than its reports first indicated, it will restate the revenues in subsequent reports to AAP, permitting AAP in turn to report information that is more accurate than previously reported.

Today, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval of the parties’ proposed class settlement of certain infringement claims in Bartz v. Anthropic. The agreement requires Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to the authors and publishers of nearly half a million books it downloaded from notorious pirate sites, as well as destroy all the original files of works torrented and downloaded from those sites and any copies that originate from the torrented copies. In aggregate, this decision marks the largest class action copyright settlement in history, with a reported claims rate of 92.77 percent.  As defined by the court, the class includes legal or beneficial copyright owners, specifically the owners of the exclusive right to reproduce copies, of any book that was downloaded by Anthropic through Library Genesis (LibGen) in June 2021 or from Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) in July 2022, has an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within five years of first publication, and was registered before being downloaded by Anthropic, or within three months of first publication. The class covers hundreds of thousands of works of AAP member companies and their authors, and many other works.

Statement from AAP President and CEO Maria A. Pallante:

“We applaud the court’s final approval of this settlement, which represents an important victory in the larger battle to hold big tech accountable for its unscrupulous appropriation of intellectual and creative properties that clearly belong to authors and publishers. In this case, the court recognized that downloading from pirate sites is not a choice we should simply accept as an efficiency for the infringer; on the contrary, it’s abhorrent conduct that should never be normalized.

Nor should fair use extend to training, which can easily be licensed like every other digital use in the modern copyright economy. Tech companies might like a copyright law with a giant hole in the place of exclusive rights, but that law does not exist. Partnerships, not piracy, are the best path forward.”

The order granting final approval can be found here. 

Today, three major publishing houses, Hachette Book Group, Inc., Cengage Learning, Inc., and Elsevier Inc., and best-selling author Scott Turow filed a putative class action lawsuit against Google for willful infringement of millions of textual works to develop Google’s Gemini large language models. Plaintiffs bring these claims on behalf of themselves and a proposed class of authors and publishers.

The scope of the complaint underscores that authors and publishers are united in the goal of protecting their valuable intellectual property rights in works of fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, memoirs, and poetry, as well as educational works and scholarly articles that span thousands of subject areas and research developments. While publishers had initially intended to pursue their claims against Google for its brazen infringement as intervenors in the ongoing litigation known as In re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation, the filing of this suit at this time aims to preserve the right to pursue all the claims that publishers and their authors have against Google, including important ones that fall outside the putative class in that case.

As explained in the complaint, Google illegally copied countless books and journal articles obtained for strictly limited use in Google Books and other Google services and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet, including from known pirate sources and behind paywalls. Google further copied “those stolen works many times over to train its multi-billion-dollar generative AI system called Gemini.” Google also stripped copyright management information from the stolen works to conceal its training sources and facilitate their unauthorized use. Google then deployed its “purpose-built service designed to generate content that directly substitutes” for original works.

The complaint alleges examples showing that Google knew it lacked authorization to copy the works for AI training, including:

• Google flagged internally that using “Publisher Provided [] copyrighted books” from Google Play Books in connection with its AI was “highly problematic for Google,” warning of “$10Bs-$100Bs in potential fines.”
• Google identified specific business and legal risks associated with secretly training on Google Play Books, including that “Book publishers [are] likely to see LLM training on their books as copyright infringement. Could withdraw their content from Google Play Books file a lawsuit against Google.”
• Google’s internal analyses identified key “issues” around using Google Play Books to train AI, including “Restrictive licenses for certain partner Books content[]; “Publishers are sensitive about training on their data”; and “Heightened risk around fair use defenses.”
• Copyright owners told Google that it was not authorized to use works provided for these limited-purpose programs outside of the scope-limited programs for which the works had been provided, including to train Google’s AI models.

Plaintiffs are represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP and Keller Rohrback.

Read the full complaint here.