Book Market
Adult Fiction Sales Fell 5% in Soft First Half of 2025
Trade sales at the 1,325 publishers that report financial results to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program fell 1.3% in June and 1.7% through first six months of 2025, to $4.3 billion, over the comparable period in 2024. (The AAP includes the religion segment in its trade reporting.) Of the four major trade book categories, three are down in the year to date, with only the much smaller children’s/young adult nonfiction segment seeing gains, of 9.2%.
The biggest drop in trade came in adult fiction, where the red-hot romantasy category had previously been buoying sales. That trend does not appear to have held in the first six months, with a 5% decline in the segment. (Sales in the segment were up 11.3% in the same period last year.) Paperback sales plummeted by 13.9%, and sales of hardcover fiction titles dropped 4%, although digital audio continued its growth streak, increasing 12.1%, and e-book sales rose 3.1%.
In the nonfiction segment, a 5.5% jump in sales of hardcover adult nonfiction could not offset drops of 9.8% and 3.1% in paperback and digital audio, respectively. Adult nonfiction e-book sales rose 0.9%. Neither of the declines in the two major adult segments could be attributed to returns, which are down 5.0% and 3.8%, respectively, in adult fiction and nonfiction in the year to date.
Children’s/YA fiction saw paperback sales decline 1.5% and hardcover sales dip .9%, while sales of board books dropped 2.1%. Audio and e-book sales were up 4.8% and 7.0%, respectively, in the segment. In children’s/YA nonfiction, the only bright spot, paperback sales jumped 12.4%, and hardcover sales saw a 3.2% bump, while board books eked out a 0.7% increase.
Even sales of religion titles, which had been strong, barely saw a bump in the year to date, with a 0.1% increase overall. University press sales dipped 0.7% in the period. Total sales for reporting publishers, which include sales in the higher education and professional books segments, were down 1.7%, to $6.3 billion, from $6.42 billion in the first half of last year.