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Paperbacks

US ebook sales decline but audio downloads boom

30 October 2017

Newly released figures show that ebook revenues in the US have declined again. In the first half of 2017, e-book sales declined by 4.6%, according to the Association of American PublishersThe national trade association of the American book publishing industry; AAP has more than 300 members, including most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. All other categories, apart from paperback books saw increased revenues in the same time period.  Read more

Paperbacks still have legs

8 September 2014

John Lewis of the Bookseller has argued strongly that the paperback edition is still a major factor in book sales and what's more that its position doesn't seem to be changing in the face of ebook sales nearly as much as had originally been assumed, now that things are settling down.  Read more

Hardbacks - still a success story

12 May 2014

Hardbacks, rather than ebooks, are the wild cards of the publishing industry. Who would have thought that they would survive and prosper in the age of the ebook? Wouldn't you assume that hardbacks would simply fade away once they were so radically undercut on price by ebooks, never mind paperbacks.  Read more

Paperbacks - a surprisingly resilient format

5 May 2014

When I first came into publishing, paperbacks seemed the coming thing. Surely it was only a question of time before the power of consumers drove paperbacks to centre stage and ousted those expensive hardbacks?  Read more

Fifty Shades of Grey leads erotica boom

25 June 2012

The Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon seems unstoppable. The paperback and ebook editions have sold in excess of 2.75m copies, breaking all previous records, in the UK alone and the ebook is reckoned to have sold 4m copies worldwide. US sales are over 10m.   Read more

The hardback/paperback gap

29 August 2011

The advent of ebooks and consumers' reluctance to accept the high price of hardbacks are having an impact on the traditional relationship between hardback and paperback publication.  Read more

Ebooks outsell paperbacks

31 January 2011

Amazon has just announced that ebooks for its Kindle are now outselling paperbacks.  Read more

'Readers want to read more'

17 March 2008

'Despite resistance from all sectors of our industry, the book market is changing. Readers want to read more and if they are going to increase the amount of books they buy they are almost certainly going to do that in the cheaper paperback formats. Consumers will read literary fiction if we present it to them in a way they find attractive and enticing.  Read more

A paperback revolution - at last?

19 November 2007

Picador, the literary imprint of Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books in the UK, has just announced that it will in future launch its new fiction in simultaneous hard and paperback editions, in response to the very poor sales of hardback literary fiction. The majority of its titles will be released in a 1,000 copy hardback edition, with some of these ring-fenced for review purposes.   Read more

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