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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors Guild announced the release of a landmark independent study by leading economists at Secretariat Advisors, titled An Empirical Study of the Impact of Library E-Lending on the Book Economy: As Public Libraries Prioritize eBook Formats, Harm to Commercial Markets Across All Formats is Quantifiable and Significant.

The study, commissioned jointly by AAP and the Authors Guild, but independently conducted by Secretariat Advisors’ economists, provides the most rigorous analysis to date of how the steep shift toward digital lending in recent years has affected the commercial marketplace for books in the United States, specifically, the consumer sales on which authors and publishers rely for financial success. The research concludes that increased digital access to e-books through library apps influences consumer behavior and impacts commercial markets across both physical and digital formats. The study further concludes there is robust and economically meaningful evidence of direct substitution between library e-lending and retail sales and that decreases in library e-book prices or certain other changes to licensing terms, as required in recent state legislative initiatives, would cause further harm to commercial markets.

Authors, publishers, and libraries enjoy a close relationship and shared objective to promote and maximize reading across all levels of society, not only to champion established works of literature but to support the continued production of books not yet written. Speaking to this alliance, the study recognizes the crucial role of libraries as both public institutions and market participants, while contributing key empirical data that is essential to understanding the broader publishing ecosystem. It describes a book economy that is fueled by human creativity, technological innovation, and market competition, under the auspices of a federal Copyright Act that serves the public by prescribing a clear profit motive to authors and publishers, as envisioned and authorized by the U.S. Constitution. It observes that recent legislative efforts by several states, however well-intentioned, would compromise and conflict with this well-established equation, by imposing government controls on the distribution, purchase, and pricing of e-books, and often audiobooks as well, in library channels to the detriment of the overall book economy.

As the study shows, these state efforts would effectively undermine the commercial marketplace by demanding more digital copies for libraries for less money immediately upon first publication with little regard for the larger ecosystem. The financial impact would be felt by authors and their publishers whose livelihoods and business models depend on robust and sustainable revenue streams, by bookstores and state and local economies that will suffer lost revenues, and by consumers who will ultimately suffer from reduced supply. As further context, the study examines library funding in recent years across jurisdictions, concluding that collection budgets have not meaningfully increased and are generally constrained, even as states and localities expect libraries to offer both print and digital formats to their communities.

The study concludes that as libraries expand digital lending availability and shift their purchasing decisions from print to digital formats, they invariably compete with consumer channels, especially during the early window of a book’s commercial potential, given the ease of checking out e-books at any time of day or night with just a couple of clicks.  Data cited in the study shows that e-books now account for nearly half of many libraries’ collections as digital check-outs have increased significantly in recent years and library costs per license have fallen.

The following is a joint statement from Maria A. Pallante, AAP President and CEO and Mary Rasenberger, Authors Guild CEO:

“This expert study will be of critical interest to everyone who cares deeply about the future of books, including the authors who write them, the publishers who invest in them, and the booksellers and librarians who promote and deliver them to readers and communities across the country through a dynamic variety of formats, distribution channels, access models, and price points designed to give each book its best shot at success for as long a period as possible.

For state legislatures that seek to intrude into the literary marketplace by singling out e-formats for government mandates, the study addresses the significant economic consequences likely to result from such actions.  It is a central tenet of copyright that licensors and licensees should individually negotiate their terms in competitive transactions that are free of government regulation by state or local governments. This time-tested legal framework has built a U.S. creative economy and book supply that are world-renowned, but which should not be taken for granted.

We note that many if not most libraries are inadequately funded for their outsized missions and collection needs in contemporary society, but the solution is not to upend the book marketplace. Rather, fully funding libraries should be an urgent priority for all lawmakers, and the Authors Guild and AAP stand firmly behind efforts that would increase taxpayer funding at every level of government and support new ideas for private sector support.  It should be obvious to policymakers that both the mission of libraries and the intellectual property of authors and publishers are equally invaluable to the public interest, not a tradeoff.

As a matter of law, it is incontrovertible that state governments lack constitutional authority to contradict our national copyright system for books or any other protected creative expression, which is the exclusive province of the U.S. Congress. In short, the key to the future of books across all formats will not come from the statehouse but from ongoing private sector innovation and more numerous and varied business models that are the result of nimble and competitive marketplace negotiations. It is our view that debates in the states, frequently accompanied by misinformation about law and facts, have not assisted the discussions between licensors and licensees but rather polarized and confused them.  

We believe this study presents new information that points to the importance of a healthy book economy that is able to reflect and respond to complex digital markets with an eye to the future, free of one-size-fits-all mandates or artificial terms that ask the private sector to subsidize the state.  In this moment, as creators throughout the world face enormous harm from AI-generated products that have infringed their works on a mass scale and now compete with them for sales, the common cause of authors, publishers, libraries, and booksellers—to get more people reading and more books into the hands of readers—has never been more important.”

Key Findings from the Study

• “[D]igital checkouts for e-books and audiobooks have exploded in recent years as libraries have reformulated their spending to prioritize digital formats, and patrons have discovered the ease of digital borrowing made possible through frictionless library apps.”

• “[S]hifts in the library marketplace have affected consumer behavior and commercial markets. Even where print remains the preferred format for purchase, some readers may still shift to reading digitally when library access makes the digital option easy, immediate and free.”

• “[T]o the extent e-lending is likely to significantly decrease book sales, economic theory would expect market forces to account for that through negotiations over the scope and extent of restrictions on library lending of e-books in licensing agreements.”

• “[C]onsumer print sales decline by approximately 0.85 to 1.0 percent for every one-percentage-point increase in the share of e-books in public libraries, with adult fiction being at the upper end of this range.”

• “[T]here is robust and economically meaningful evidence of direct, within-title substitution between library e-lending and retail sales, especially early in the lifecycle of a book.”

• “[W]ith respect to bestsellers, library e-lending is not serving as a channel for discovery but rather is substituting for retail e-book sales at the national level.”

• “Numerous states…have attempted to legislate special treatment for library e-books that appears to contravene the Copyright Act’s preemption of state law by capping or otherwise interfering with licensing fees, removing controls on the number of copies available to libraries, and/or forbidding economically rational practices such as windowing that are widespread in other creative content industries.”

• “These findings suggest that state legislative efforts related to public library e-lending, however well-intentioned, present significant negative consequences for the publishing ecosystem and consumers by exacerbating substitution between e-lending and retail sales, which threatens to destabilize the commercial book market.”

• “[A]cquisitions budgets remain constrained even as libraries are expected to maintain both print and digital collections.”

About the Study:

This study is the work product of Jéssica Dutra, Ph.D. and Robert Stoner, Ph.D. of Secretariat Advisors. Undertaken at the request of the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, the study’s empirical analyses and all findings belong entirely to Secretariat Advisors. Secretariat Advisors is a global expert witness, litigation consulting, and economic advisory firm trusted to address complex legal, risk, and regulatory matters. Read more at secretariat-intl.com.

The full study is available here.

About AAP

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) represents 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 across a variety of formats and business models in support of an inspired and well-read democracy. AAP fights vigorously for the copyright and freedom of expression protections that have been the lifeblood of American publishing for more than 250 years, from the printing press to digital markets. Comprised of small, large, independent, scholarly, commercial, and nonprofit houses, AAP’s members collectively cultivate and publish a vast body of literature by both new and established authors, including winners of every major writing prize.  Learn more at publishers.org.

About The Authors Guild

The Authors Guild is the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for published writers in the United States, with a particular expertise and long history of involvement in freedom of expression protections and copyright law, which together are the constitutional and economic bedrock of authors’ livelihoods. With over 18,000 members, the Authors Guild advocates for authors’ rights and fair pay, and protects against challenges such as infringement, censorship, book bans, the misuse of AI, and nonpayment. In addition to engaging with legislatures and the courts on behalf of all writers of every level of achievement, the Authors Guild offers resources, legal support, and a professional community to individual authors to help sustain their careers and thrive in an evolving literary landscape.  Learn more at authorsguild.org.

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), News/Media Alliance (N/MA), and International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) filed an amicus brief in In Re Mosaic LLM Litigation. This case was brought in March 2024 by a group of authors alleging, among other things, that the defendants, Mosaic and Databricks, downloaded datasets including pirated copies of copyrighted textual works, and trained large language models (LLMs) using copyrighted works.  The case is before Judge Charles Breyer in the Northern District of California.

The brief urges the district court to deny the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and find that their unauthorized use of copyrighted works for AI training is not fair use.  As the brief explains, fair use is a critical exception to exclusive rights that should not be extended to LLMs that exploit expressive content to generate expressive content, essentially serving substitutes for copyrighted works.  Unlicensed AI training substantially and adversely usurp markets that rightfully belong to copyright owners, including markets for derivative works and AI licensing. 

Excerpts from the brief:

• Overly expansive interpretations of fair use displace the market mechanisms Congress established, replacing negotiated exchange with uncompensated (and uncredited) use and transferring value from the authors and publishers that invest in them to industries that neither incurred the costs nor assumed the risks of producing the underlying works.
• When properly analyzed, LLMs, like those of the defendants, exploit copyrighted works for their expressive value for the same purpose, ultimately generating substitutes for the works used for training.  Fair use should not sanction AI systems with an inherent “problem of substitution.”
• Consistent with their purpose, design, and training, LLMs can readily generate substitutes for the copyrighted works on which they are trained, resulting in non-transformative uses.  Those substitutes can take the form of verbatim and near-verbatim copies, summaries and alternative versions of written works, knock-offs that copy expression and creative choices from original works, and derivative works exclusively reserved for rightsholders.  LLMs’ proven ability to generate outputs that substitute for, are derivatives of, or otherwise exploit the expressive content of the original works further demonstrates that LLMs are not highly transformative. 
• Consumers are confused and overwhelmed, and copyright owners are losing revenues and market visibility to the flood of AI-generated books and other text.
• [L]icensing provides AI developers authorized access to human-created works and high-quality content.  Using unauthorized content from online or questionable sources carries the risk of tainting training sets with low-quality, such as AI-generated, text.  For AI to flourish, licensing is needed to ensure humans continue to be incentivized to create so that the well of human creation does not run dry and that AI companies have reliable access to content that improves model performance.

The full amicus brief is available here.

"Dolly Parton lived a magnificent life focused on creativity, compassion, and joy. In addition to her inspiring personal journey and singular reputation as a singer-songwriter, she was a widely read book author and reading advocate, dedicated to giving children their very own books to hold, read, and keep through her Imagination Library. Dolly was truly one of a kind and the publishing community will miss her tremendously.”

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.