Association of American Publishers: audiobooks revenue is up 17%+ YoY, e-book sales are up 16%+; NPD BookScan says US print book sales are up ~8% in 2020
With people stuck at home and so many other activities shut down, a lot of reading — or at least a lot of book buying — happened this year. Tweets: @nytimesbooks , @nytimesbooks , @pamelapaulnyt , @fidmart85 , and @mariskreizman Tweets: @nytimesbooks : “I expect that at the end of the year, when you look at the final numbers,” Madeline McIntosh, chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., said of the publishing industry, “it will have been the best year in a very long time” https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimesbooks : “It was really a tale of two cities,” said Dennis Abboud, whose company distributes books to major retailers like Walmart, Target and Costco. “The beginning of the year was mega soft, and the end of the year was mega strong.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Pamela Paul / @pamelapaulnyt : Some (mostly) good news to end the year https://www.nytimes.com/... Fidel Martinez / @fidmart85 : Still pretty white tho https://twitter.com/... Maris Kreizman / @mariskreizman : This article is about how Amazon and big box stores had a good year but indie booksellers are still struggling. That the display in the accompanying photo is of @HarvardBooks and not, say, Target, speaks volumes. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a five-year arc. After e-book sales fell 10% in early 2015 and print showed unexpected resilience, publishers redirected their growth bets — pouring resources into audiobook production following 21% audio growth in 2015. By late 2019, e-books had stabilized around 20% of sales, with print often the cheaper format after the Apple price-fixing aftermath reset e-book pricing.
First-order effects
- Penguin Random House U.S. and its peers get a rare across-the-board windfall: digital formats (audiobooks +17%, e-books +16%) and print (+8% per NPD BookScan) all grew in the same year, with CEO Madeline McIntosh calling it potentially the industry's best year in a long time.
- The lockdown-driven surge lands hardest on digital formats, validating the audiobook investment publishers made after the 2015 growth signal.
Second-order effects
- Audiobook demand outrunning the production capacity publishers built since 2016 pressures narration and studio supply chains, favoring whoever can scale catalog fastest — an advantage that compounds for the largest publishers.
- Retail channels that moved the print volume — Amazon, Costco, and Target among the named players — capture the +8% print upside, while digital growth strengthens the case for subscription audio platforms over per-unit sales.
Third-order effects
- If the audio growth curve holds, the market's center of gravity shifts from unit sales to subscription distribution — a path the later data confirms, when Spotify's entry pushed measured audiobook growth to 28% and left Audible on top with an 11% share per Bookstat's Q4 2023 figures.
The trend: Book publishing's growth is migrating from unit sales to audio, with pandemic-era gains accelerating the shift toward subscription and streaming distribution.