The Billion-Dollar Book Market

With more and more media consumed electronically and most importantly online these days, it’s easy to forget that printed books are still a billion-dollar business. According to the Association of American Publishers, revenue for trade (consumer) book publishers amounted to $7.83 billion last year, up from $7.49 billion in 2017.

Interestingly printed books, i.e. hardback and paperback books, accounted for the lion’s share of the market’s dollar growth in 2018, while ebook revenues actually decline by 3.6 percent. With a combined revenue of $5.71 billion, hardback and paperback books accounted for 73 percent of trade book revenue in the United States last year, illustrating that even in a digital age the printed word doesn't go out of style.