Digital Book sales in the United States have been declining all year long. This is likely due to the pandemic being a thing of the past and bookstores have been opened all year long. Ebook revenues were down 6.3% for the month as compared to June 2021 for a total of $83.0 million. Digital audiobooks sales was up 9.8% for June, coming in at $72.4 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 44.1% coming in at $1.0 million.
Year-to-date ebook revenues were down 8.5% as compared to the first six months of 2021 for a total of $500.4 million. Digital audiobook sales were up 3.8%, coming in at $400.6 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 36.4% coming in at $7.1 million.
In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of June, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 10.9%, coming in at $181.3 million; Paperbacks were up 9.0%, with $253.9 million in revenue; Mass Market was up 16.9% to $21.4 million; while Special Bindings were down 23.8%, with $11.0 million in revenue. Year-to-date Trade revenues were down 0.8%, at $4.2 billion for the first six months of the year. Hardback revenues were down 7.9%, coming in at $1.4 billion; Paperbacks were up 9.0%, with $1.5 billion in revenue; Mass Market was down 20.9% to $95.5 million; and Special Bindings were down 1.0%, with $79.8 million in revenue.
You can see from the statistics that digital book sales do not really make very much money on a monthly basis, whereas print are making hundreds of millions of dollars, since it is the most preferred format to read.
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.
