Surprise Ending for Publishers: In 2020, Business Was Good

Many of these sales went to Amazon, but big-box stores, especially Target, also did well. As essential businesses that sold things like groceries, they were allowed to stay open through the lockdowns. Dennis Abboud, chief executive of ReaderLink, a book distributor to major chains like Walmart, Target and Costco, said his company’s online sales nearly quadrupled over last year.

“It was really a tale of two cities,” Mr. Abboud said. “The beginning of the year was mega soft, and the end of the year was mega strong.”

Even though the number of people commuting has plummeted this year, audiobook revenue is up more than 17 percent over the same period in 2019, according to the Association of American Publishers, and e-book sales, which had been declining for the past several years, are up more than 16 percent.

There have been a few particularly powerful themes in book selling this year. The Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd at the end of May caused a rush on books about race and antiracism. Bookstores had trouble keeping titles in stock like “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Ibram X. Kendi, and “So You Want to Talk About Race,” by Ijeoma Oluo.

Political books, especially about President Trump, have also performed well. That was a particular boon for Simon Schuster, which published some of the biggest presidential tell-alls of the year, including Mary L. Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough,” which sold more than 1.35 million copies in its first week. Former President Barack Obama’s memoir, “A Promised Land,” published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, has sold more than 3.3 million copies in North America since it was published last month, and it has also been a best seller in countries like Germany, France, Brazil and Sweden.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/books/book-publishing-2020.html