EL James's erotic trilogy and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games novels topped the books charts last year and contributed to an overall rise in digital and print sales for 2012
Fifty Shades author EL James's blend of romance and erotica has helped to drag the book trade out of the doldrums, with new statistics showing that 2011's decline in sales has been reversed and more money was spent on books in 2012 than ever before.
The rise in the book trade's fortunes was driven by digital developments, with total digital sales up by 66% to £411m in 2012, and total fiction ebook sales up by 149% to £172m, according to figures released today by the Publishers Association. Print continues to account for the vast majority of book sales, but unlike in 2011, when print sales fell as digital rose, leading to an overall decline in the market of 2% to £3.2bn, in 2012 even though physical book sales were down by 1% to £2.9bn, overall the book market grew by 4%, reaching a record-breaking £3.3bn.
The recovery was led by the British public's insatiable appetite for erotica, with James's three Fifty Shades titles taking the top three spots in the print chart in 2012, according to figures from Nielsen BookScan. The first novel in the trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, sold 4.46m copies last year, the second sold 3.16m and the third 2.9m. Although there are, as yet, no official ebook charts, Fifty Shades of Grey also topped The Bookseller magazine's analysis of the bestselling ebooks of 2012, selling 1,609,626 ebooks last year, according to the magazine.
Headed by James and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy – the first novel in the series sold 832,350 copies in print last year, and 405,000 ebooks, according to the Bookseller - fiction had a particularly strong performance in 2012, with physical and digital sales of novels up by 21% to £674 million, said the Publishers Association.
The Publishers Association statistics are based on data compiled from around 270 publishers representing 78% of total UK publisher sales. The trade body said that digital book formats – including audiobook downloads and online subscriptions as well as ebooks – now account for 12% of the total invoiced value of book sales, up from 8% in 2011 and 5% in 2010.
Richard Mollet, chief executive at the Publishers Association, said that the statistics show that "British publishing is a healthy industry which continues to grow", with "the continued increase in digital sales across different disciplines illustrat[ing] the shift of readers to ebook reading".
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
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