Digital book revenues in the United States have been in a constant state of decline since the pandemic started to ease. In February 2022, this trend continued as the format declined by over 6.9% and generated $91.5 million. Digital audiobook fells for the first time in over 5 years, it was down 3.9% for February, coming in at $68.9 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 3.8% coming in at $1.2 million.
Year to date ebook revenues were down 8.4% as compared to the first two months of 2021 for a total of $172.9 million. The Downloaded Audio format was up 0.2%, coming in at $131.0 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 25.1% coming in at $2.4 million.
Consumer Book sales were up 9.5% in February, coming in at $705.2 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of February, Hardback revenues were up 8.5%, coming in at $247.3 million; Paperbacks were up 28.5%, with $241.5 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 26.4% to $16.0 million; and Special Bindings were up 21.2%, with $15.6 million in revenue. Year to date consumer books were up 6.8%, at $1.4 billion for the first two months of the year. Hardback revenues were up 7.7%, coming in at $508.8 million; Paperbacks were up 17.6%, with $492.1 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 14.8% to $35.1 million; and Special Bindings were up 4.5%, with $30.8 million in revenue.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
