From Galleycat:
Publishers Assess the Damage from November
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its retail figures for November 2008, including a 13 percent decline in bookstore sales compared to the year before. Now the Association of American Publishers has released its numbers for the month, reporting a 14.4 percent decline—and, when all the revenue for the first eleven months of the year is tallied, it's down 4.4 percent from the year before.
Nearly every category experienced severe declines; children's and YA hardcovers were one of the few categories to improve, showing a 14.3 percent from November 2007, but the year-to-date sales are still down 20.6 percent. Oh, and e-book business more than doubled for the month, and is up nearly 64 percent for the year—but you could take e-book sales for all of 2008, quintuple them, and you still wouldn't have as much money as publishers report in sales for even a lousy month like November.
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I can't help but think book sales will continue to go down if for no other reason than they cost so much to buy. Mass market paperbacks are now ten dollars? Each? That's not mass market. I can't afford to pay list prices at my one and only local bookstore. I'm down to mostly used books and if that market ever dries up I will go back to my youth and be a library reader.
On the other hand, I buy more new books for my kids than I do for myself. They are often in the 3.99 to 5.99 dollar range. In a word, affordable.
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