Monday, March 15, 2004

How bestsellers have changed

How bestsellers have changed lists some "facts of import" from a USA Today article on the book business:
  1. Never have so many books been published: in the U.S. more than 1,000 new titles a week, nearly double the rate in 1993.

  2. Aggregate book sales are flat.

  3. '[L]ast year the average American spent more time on the Internet (about three hours a week) than reading books (about two hours a week). And...the average American adult spent more money last year on movies, videos and DVDs ($166) than on books ($90).'

  4. Bestsellers (top ten in the major categories) account for only 4% of book sales.

  5. Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com and BookSense.com account for 8% of U.S. book sales.

  6. Discount stores and price clubs account for 11% of U.S. book sales.

  7. Humor books have fallen from 5.3% of the bestsellers market in 1995 to 0.6% today.

  8. The Cliff Notes version of The Scarlet Letter outsells the real thing by 3 to 1.

  9. In August dictionaries are 77% of all reference book sales. Otherwise they run less than five percent of the total.

Labels: , ,