Fascinating context—thank you for digging into all these historical sources.
I can help explain Circana/NPD/Nielsen PubTrack Digital figures: When they report ebook or digital sales, that's coming from publishers' own reporting and not retail or through-the-register sales like print books. So that graph you have does not reflect the self-pub sales on the ebook/digital side. They've never been able to capture the self-pub market except for its print retail sales.
Hi Jane! Fancy seeing you here 😊 Is Bookstat considered the go-to source for online sales data? I see they’re share some data via Publishers Weekly in the past, but I haven’t seen anything more recent than 2023.
Yes and no. I use Bookstat data myself to generate some monthly bestseller lists, and based on my conversations with them and knowledge of their methodology (going back to Author Earnings days), they're extrapolating probable sales based on online retailer ranking. It's by no means precise (not on the level of NPD), but some publishers/businesses use it to understand what's surfacing online, and that includes during the pre-order period. It's telling that Podium bought them given their business model (which is to identify what's popping online then reach out to those authors with audio and other deals).
That’s amazing that you have some access to their data. Their website said their service is for companies with $10M+ in annual revenue, so I didn’t look much further lol. Their methodology sounds similar to what K-lytics does.
Great post! Thank you for sharing this historical data. I’m continually shocked by how little data is available about book sales beyond the dribs and drabs that Circana chooses to share.
I did a poll on my Instagram (which targets romance readers) about primary reading format and 63% said ebook, so I think romance readers likely do consume more ebooks. But not enough to explain the significant drop. (Romance readers also appear to be big library borrowers too).
All the big romantasy books are being counted in romance counts. I feel confident about this because Circana reports that talk about romance sales explicitly mention specific romantasy titles and also speak to how romantasy is part of what is driving recent growth.
Yes!!!! I've been reading romance since the mid-1980s and I can speak to how print copies were stocked on shelves. In most non-romance specific bookstores you would be hard-pressed to find the proliferation of different titles and authors that existed in the eighties and nineties. What I have seen is that only a handful authors account for today's sales and there is far less diversity in the market in regards to what is stocked then there was thirty years ago.
Thanks for sharing your memories of how it used to be! And yes, 100%: any recent gains in sales can be attributed directly to one or two best-selling authors, and overall the bestsellers account for a much larger percentage of all sales compared with previous eras. Midlist or new romance authors used to have print runs in the tens and hundreds of thousands!
Fascinating context—thank you for digging into all these historical sources.
I can help explain Circana/NPD/Nielsen PubTrack Digital figures: When they report ebook or digital sales, that's coming from publishers' own reporting and not retail or through-the-register sales like print books. So that graph you have does not reflect the self-pub sales on the ebook/digital side. They've never been able to capture the self-pub market except for its print retail sales.
Thank you, Jane! I had a feeling the digital data was publisher-reported, which explains how they have data from Amazon.
Hi Jane! Fancy seeing you here 😊 Is Bookstat considered the go-to source for online sales data? I see they’re share some data via Publishers Weekly in the past, but I haven’t seen anything more recent than 2023.
Yes and no. I use Bookstat data myself to generate some monthly bestseller lists, and based on my conversations with them and knowledge of their methodology (going back to Author Earnings days), they're extrapolating probable sales based on online retailer ranking. It's by no means precise (not on the level of NPD), but some publishers/businesses use it to understand what's surfacing online, and that includes during the pre-order period. It's telling that Podium bought them given their business model (which is to identify what's popping online then reach out to those authors with audio and other deals).
That’s amazing that you have some access to their data. Their website said their service is for companies with $10M+ in annual revenue, so I didn’t look much further lol. Their methodology sounds similar to what K-lytics does.
Yes!
Great post! Thank you for sharing this historical data. I’m continually shocked by how little data is available about book sales beyond the dribs and drabs that Circana chooses to share.
I did a poll on my Instagram (which targets romance readers) about primary reading format and 63% said ebook, so I think romance readers likely do consume more ebooks. But not enough to explain the significant drop. (Romance readers also appear to be big library borrowers too).
Is it possible that the Romantasy books that are taking the book world by storm are not being counted? Maybe they are going into fantasy?
All the big romantasy books are being counted in romance counts. I feel confident about this because Circana reports that talk about romance sales explicitly mention specific romantasy titles and also speak to how romantasy is part of what is driving recent growth.
Yes!!!! I've been reading romance since the mid-1980s and I can speak to how print copies were stocked on shelves. In most non-romance specific bookstores you would be hard-pressed to find the proliferation of different titles and authors that existed in the eighties and nineties. What I have seen is that only a handful authors account for today's sales and there is far less diversity in the market in regards to what is stocked then there was thirty years ago.
Thanks for sharing your memories of how it used to be! And yes, 100%: any recent gains in sales can be attributed directly to one or two best-selling authors, and overall the bestsellers account for a much larger percentage of all sales compared with previous eras. Midlist or new romance authors used to have print runs in the tens and hundreds of thousands!
This is fascinating data, thank you!