With March Rebound, Publishing Sales Rose 1% in Q1

After a sluggish January and February, sales at the 1,325 publishers who report results to AAP’s StatShot program posted a 7.3% increase in March. With the increase, sales for the first quarter of 2025 moved into positive territory, up 1% over the comparable period in 2024. Through February, sales had been down 1.7%.

The big driver in March was once again the higher education course materials segment where sales jumped 28.9%. For the first three months of the year, sales increased 8.2% over 2024.

For the quarter, adult fiction sales were down 2.7% with all the print formats posting a decline. Digital sales remained strong in the category with audio up 18.6% and e-book increasing 8.7%. Nonfiction sales slipped 0.1% in the quarter. Trade paperback was the weak spot, with sales falling 7.4% and offsetting a gain of 11.5% for hardcover sales. Digital audio sales fell 2.5% in the period, but e-book sales inched up 0.3%.

For the first three months of 2025, children’s/ya fiction sales dipped 1.4% from last year, but nonfiction rose 3.2%. Hardcover sales rose 3.2% for fiction, but paperback sales fell 2.8%. Both print formats posted small gains in children’s/YA nonfiction in the quarter.

The religious book segment had a 3.8% increase in the quarter helped by 6.1% gain in March. The two big print segments led the quarterly gains with hardcover up 4.6% and paperback sales increasing 0.4%.

In the other categories, sales of professional books were down 5% in March and 6.1% in the year-to-date. Sales of university press books rose 2.4% in March and 1.2% through the first three months of the year.