Book sales

After the first lockdown in March 2020, I went looking for book sales data. I'm a data scientist and a literary scholar, and I wanted to know what books people were turning to in the early days of the pandemic for comfort, distraction, hope, guidance. How many copies of Emily St.  Read more

US book publishing generated $29.3bn (£25.7bn) industry-wide in 2021 compared to its 2020 revenues of $26.1bn (£22.9bn), an increase of 12.3%, 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 (AAP), with more people buying from bookshops.  Read more

In the 2021 Netflix film "Don't Look Up", two astronomers played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio embark on a media tour to warn the public about an impending comet collision that will doom the planet. The problem: no one really cares. Publishing takes a different approach to such matters. As an industry we assume the sky is falling down, even when it isn't.

E-book sales fell in 2021 to lowest point since 2012, Nielsen data reveals

Books are one of the first entertainment technologies-and one whose fundamentals are essentially the same since Gutenberg rolled out movable type to revolutionize printing in 1440. Given the stability of the format, it's amazing just how much there is still to talk about, and how vital book publishing remains even as many newer technologies have come along.