U.S. Book Sales for 2007: $25 Billion

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) just released its annual estimate of total book sales in the United States: $25 billion. This represents a 3.2% increase over 2006 sales. Interestingly, a big part of this increase came from sales of adult hardcover books. What does this mean? Are publishers becoming more effective marketers? Is it becoming cooler to display a bunch of nice-looking hardcovers? Regardless of the reason, I’m always happy to see increased book sales. Even if people aren’t reading the books, at least the authors (or some of them, anyway) are making money.

Not surprisingly, sales of audio books and eBooks also had healthy increases.