From Publishers Weekly:
As a result, sales of adult hardcover fell by 22.7% in April from the 19 companies that report to AAP, while trade paperback sales at 21 houses fell 25.4%. Sales of mass market paperback, for which Borders is an important outlet, plunged 41.6% for the 11 reporting houses. Sales in the children’s/YA segment rose 1.5% in April from 18 houses, but children’s/YA paperback sales declined 7.2%.
E-book sales had another strong month, with sales up 157.5%, to $72.8 million from 22 reporting companies. The increase, however, was not enough to offset declines in the print sector and as a result combined print and digital sales of trade books fell 10% at the reporting companies in the month.
For the first four months of the year, the sales decline was less severe. E-book sales were up 162.9% for the period, to $312.9 million, while print sales in the five trade segments were down 18.7%, leading to an overall decline of 4% in the first four months of 2011.
A 4% decline is actually not so bad, given the state of the economy right now. At least ebook sales seem to be helping to buoy the market, instead of sinking it.
At any rate, this seems like enough of a trend indication to suggest that booksellers might want to divert resources towards the increasing ebook market, and away from the decreasing print market.
It seems the swing away from paper books towards ebooks is irreversible thus eroding the big publishing houses’ power, which gives established and emerging authors more clout. I think that is a good thing.
I notice audiobook download stats were conspicuously absent from this press release.
This seems to attribute the print sales decline to issues with the Borders bankruptcy, not to ebook sales.
And why do we only get percentages for print sales and not actual dollars sold? Or numbers of ebook versus print books sold? I’d like to see actual market size info. How big is the print market still versus the ebook market?