AAP Revises January 2015 Revenue Estimates, Trade Revenues Now up 5%, eBook Revenues Still Down
The Association of American Publishers has some egg on their faces this Monday afternoon.
Citing technical errors stemming from new PRH reporting procedures, the AAP has released revised stats for their Statshot report for January, correcting the stats released last Wednesday.
Rather than staying flat, trade book revenues were up 5% in January. eBook revenues were still down 8%, though. In light of the market being up, that is actually worse than what we were told last week.
Publisher’s Lunch has the specifics:
Most significantly, overall trade of sales of $533 million for January 2015 were up 5 percent compared to a year ago (rather than flat), rising $25 million. In contrast to 2014, the gains all came from adult sales — due to lighter holiday returns, frankly, more than big increases in publisher shipments. Adult trade paperbacks rose the most, up $19.1 million to $122.7 million for the month. Children’s print book sales were up in all formats, though overall children’s sales declined $1.6 million to $140.3 million in January on much weaker ebook sales. Reflecting the absence of new crossover YA hits compared to a year ago, children’s ebook sales of $15.7 million were down from $24.2 million in 2014.
…
So January 2015 ebook sales were $129.4 million — in the end, down 8 percent from the revised comp for January 2014 of $140.3 million. With the growth in overall sales, that leaves ebooks comprising just over 24 percent of sales this January, compared to 27.5 percent a year ago.
The same basic conclusion I reached last week still applies; the decline in ebook sales were probably caused by the return of agency. There is no way to prove it but it is the most probable conclusion.
image by Loco Steve
Comments
IIUII May 4, 2015 um 6:07 pm
Typo at the penultimate word.
Nate Hoffelder May 4, 2015 um 6:57 pm
Fixed it, thanks.
Mackay Bell May 5, 2015 um 3:08 pm
Ebook sales are down because of the return of agency and the fact that they aren’t fully counting all self-published book sales.
fjtorres May 6, 2015 um 3:46 pm
Check the May Author Earnings report.
Pretty much the same numbers on dollars but a whopper of a drop on units.
And a matching net gain for Indies.
So no, ebook sales aren’t dropping for everybody.
Nate Hoffelder May 6, 2015 um 4:03 pm
Yep. Working on a post.