Monday, October 31, 2011

AAP Sales too obscured to chart

Do I chart August sales that were YTD sales are far less than the sum of prior YTD reports?

YTD hardcover sums to $930.4M (January through July) while the AAP reports YTD sales through August of $641.7M. Ummm....

YTD paperback sums to $772.5M (January through July) while the AAP reports YTD of 772.5M.

YTD MMP $380.4M (through July) vs. $310.4 through August.

YTD Childrends $734.23 through July vs. a reported $638.4M through August.

Ebooks: $638.4M through July vs. reported $649.2M through August.

In other words, the downward revisions in sales mean August had massive negative sales for every category except ebooks. Ebooks would have puny sales... I suspect fewer vendors reported.

I hope monthly book sales come out later. August sales would normally have come out now, but the AAP is delaying, hiding, and obscuring the data as much as possible. I suspect we'll see numbers later worth graphing.

But when the sum of 8 months of sales is that much less than the sum of the previously reported 7 months of sales...

Neil

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, they stopped posting the press releases to their website, leading me to suspect that they weren't so keen on bloggers using their figures to point out where Big Publishing was headed.

    Anyway, eBooknewser have the August numbers broken out here:

    http://www.mediabistro.com/ebooknewser/ebook-sales-up-116-in-august_b17180

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have no idea, but is it possible that the YTD numbers take account of returns? I seriously doubt it, but if there is a discrepancy (like you suggest) that's one theory anyway.

    ReplyDelete