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While the pandemic sent shockwaves across the world’s book industry in 2020, some international markets reported strong performances with the US posting record-breaking sales while Australia also saw a major boost, according to figures shared with The Bookseller by the various book trade publications.
Combined print book and e-book sales hit 942 million units in 2020 in the US: at outlets that report to NPD BookScan—a 9% increase over 2019, figures from Publishers Weekly show.
It was the highest unit sales recorded in a single year by BookScan since the service was created in 2004. Further boosting publishers' bottom lines, there were fewer returns as more sales happened online.
Print sales rose 8.2% over 2019: the largest annual increase since 2005. The print total of 751 million units sold was the highest since 2009, when e-books gained in popularity. E-book unit sales, as measured by NPD’s PubTrack Digital service, rose 12.6% over 2019 (although e-book sales figures for November and December are projections). The gains represent a strong rebound from a disappointing 2019, when overall book sales posted a 1.3% decline after six straight years of growth.
Juvenile non-fiction purchases jumped after schools locked down in the spring. Sales increased again early in the summer, tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, while adult fiction rose during the summer months. Political books, in particular Trump-related titles, rebounded in 2020 after a soft 2019, with a number of million-selling blockbuster books from John Bolton, Mary L Trump, and Bob Woodward. The first volume of Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land became the bestselling book of 2020.
In Germany, statistics from Buchreport showed a boom in the first half of December was followed by a stringent lockdown with stores closed during the main pre-Christmas shopping days, contributing to 5.1% lower revenue across all sales channels than in December 2019.
Overall the market in 2020 reported a drop of 2.3% in revenue, with 5.3% fewer copies sold and 3.2% higher prices on average. In regards to genres, fiction and non-fiction outperformed the market (with falls of 1.6% and 1.3% respectively) as did children's books (which rose 4.7%).
Meanwhile, Austria reported a more positive December because of a three-week sales window for Christmas sandwiched between lockdowns in November and immediately after the festive period. The overall market was in the black in December (up 0.9%). However, the year overall saw the book trade 4.4% down on sales.
In France book production was significantly affected by the lockdown, Livres Hebdo said, with new titles down by 9.6% for the year. Releases stopped totally during the first lockdown between March 17th and 11th May and stayed very slow during the second one (30th October to 15th December).
Book sales in France were down 4.5% on average compared to the previous year however small local bookstores ( with a drop of just 1.8%) and independent booksellers (down 4.2%) did better. Book sales were more affected in multimedia stores (down 4.7%) and hypermarkets (down 5.4%). The data on genre showed that children’s book sales were down 1% while fiction was down 1.5%,and non-fiction did worse, down 5%.
Sweden saw a major boost in sales over the pandemic, research from Svensk Bokhandel has revealed. Total sales increased by 8.7% in value and 21.5% in volume, according to figures from the Swedish Booksellers Association and The Swedish Publishers Association. However physical bookstores saw their sales plummet by 19.1% while internet bookstores and book clubs had sales boosted by 19% compared to the previous year. The increase in sales for digital subscription services amounted to 25.2%.
Japan fared relatively well, according to Bunka News, because while many bookstores were closed owing to the pandemic in April 2020, demand for print books, magazines and e-books increased to 1,616.8 billion yen (up 4.8% year-on-year) from January to December 2020. The e-book share of the publishing market increased 4.4% from 2019's percentage to 24.3%.
In Brazil, Nielsen recorded sales of 41.9 million copies, up 0.87% from 2019, PublishNews has reported. Revenue, however, presented a negative variation of 0.47%, without taking into account inflation of 4.23%. In the second half of March the lockdown began, leading to a 40% drop in market sales. Between March and April, the fall was 47%.
In Australia sales were up and there were strong figures in adult fiction. Despite the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the Australian book industry in 2020, overall sales figures were strong. Sales of print books in Australia grew 7.8% in 2020, according to data from Nielsen BookScan as reported by Books & Publishing, with total sales by value coming in at A$1.25bn for the year, compared to A$1.14bn for 2019. The total number of unit sales for the year was 67 million.
Adult fiction grew 13.6% compared to 2019, with children’s up 9.6%, while non-fiction grew by 4% supported by sales in the mind, body, spirit category, which was up 39% at $22m, and the biographies category, up 29% at A$81m. Boosting the latter category were sales of Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, also the country’s biggest selling title in 2020. While growth in the non-fiction category was lower than fiction and children’s, non-fiction still represents the largest portion of the market at 47%, compared to children’s (30%) and fiction (23%).