Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:31:57 +0000

Ebooks accounted for 22.55 percent, or nearly a quarter, of U.S. book publishers’ sales in 2012, according to a full-year report released by the Association of American Publishers Thursday. That’s up from 17 percent of sales in 2011 and 3 percent in 2009. Ebook growth continued to plateau, however, suggesting that the industry is maturing.

Revenues for the total U.S. trade book industry — in which the AAP includes religious publishing — were $7.1 billion in 2012, up 6.2 percent from the previous year. Of that, $1.54 billion came from ebooks: $1.25 billion from adult fiction and nonfiction, $232.8 million from children’s/young adult and $57 million from religious books.

This data comes from the AAP’s monthly StatShot reports, which survey around 1,200 publishers on category and format sales. It’s different from the data provided by BookStats, an annual survey from the AAP and the Book Industry Study Group that aims to estimate the full size of the book publishing industry in the U.S. BookStats data for 2012 will be available in May.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Borys Shevchuk

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Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP