How bestsellers have changed lists some “facts of import” from a USA Today article on the book business:
- 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.
- Aggregate book sales are flat.
- ‘[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).’
- Bestsellers (top ten in the major categories) account for only 4% of book sales.
- Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com and BookSense.com account for 8% of U.S. book sales.
- Discount stores and price clubs account for 11% of U.S. book sales.
- Humor books have fallen from 5.3% of the bestsellers market in 1995 to 0.6% today.
- The Cliff Notes version of The Scarlet Letter outsells the real thing by 3 to 1.
- In August dictionaries are 77% of all reference book sales. Otherwise they run less than five percent of the total.