Interesting Stats

Yesterday when I was ranting about the overpowering influence of one mega-celebrity over the sale of books, I came across some interesting statistics. Bear with me as I try to share them—making sense of numbers isn’t my strongpoint even though I was recently employed in the Finance Department of a huge corporation (I did documentation for them, not ledgers). But that is another story for another day.

The statistics from the Association of American Publishers show the book publishing industry net sales in the U.S. rose 1.3% from 2003 to 2004. This is encouraging, however this increase in sales has been decreasing steadily the past few years—6.4% from 2001 to 2002 down to 4.6% from 2002 to 2003. Hopefully it doesn’t mean people aren’t reading, maybe it means people are just borrowing books from each other and from libraries. Surely people are reading.

The more interesting figures were those of the largest growth categories. Adult hardbound book sales are up 6.3% from 2003 to 2004. That’s a fairly large percentage and surprises me since when I had my bookstore, my customers had the patience of saints and usually preferred to wait to buy a book when it came out in paperback. Hence the phrase "when I HAD my bookstore." Juvenile softbound book sales were up 3.8% from 2003 to 2004. Not a huge percentage, but this was VERY good news since sales in that category have been decreasing every year: -0.6% from 2001 to 2002 and -5.2% from 2002 to 2003. We’re not buying books for our children? What about all the hype about how important it is to read to our kids? All right, I won’t make assumptions, but come on!

Now the most interesting information in my mind was that religious book sales were up 5.6% from 2003 to 2004. Not too surprising given the political climate these days. But from 2002 to 2003 those sales increased---get this—50.2%. What is that all about? I have to admit that statistic is a little unnerving for me having come from a family that was torn apart by fundamentalist Christianity, but I’m not here to cast any dispersion on anyone else’s beliefs. I want to know what mega celebrity is behind that sales increase (besides the obvious, of course). And maybe, if we’re so desperate for sales, we should think about writing a little more religion into our contemporary fiction……