Sales from the more than 1,416 publishers who report revenue to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program rose 0.9% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to a year ago.
Sales of religion books, which have been solid for several years, fell 1.4% in the quarter, while sales in the industry’s biggest segment, adult books, slipped 0.5%. The decline in adult books was due entirely to a weak performance by nonfiction, where sales fell 7.8% in the period offsetting a 5.5% increase in fiction.
Within adult nonfiction, sales fell in all major formats with the exception of digital audio, where sales rose 9.2%. Hardcover sales took the biggest decline, falling 15.6%, while sales in the other major format, trade paperback, dropped 4.7%. E-book sales fell 13.6% in the quarter and were half the size of digital audiobook sales.
Sales of digital audio had the biggest increase in adult fiction, jumping 23.3%, while e-book sales, which were still higher than digital audio, dipped 3.4%. The two formats combined to account for 39% of fiction adult sales in the quarter, up from 38.2% a year ago. Among the print formats, trade paperback had a good quarter with sales up 12.1% while hardcover sales increased 1.5%.
The 2.6% increase in the children’s/YA segment was due entirely to a 16.8% jump in sales in the relatively small nonfiction category. The two most important formats, paperback and hardcover, had sales of 23.2% and 9.1%, respectively. Children’s/YA fiction sales slipped 0.7% in the quarter. Sales of paperbacks, the largest format, fell 2.1%, while hardcover sales dropped 6.5%. Sales gains in the special bindings format and in the two digital areas helped to mitigate the declines in hardcover and paperback.
The 1.4% drop in sales of religious books was due to a 4.3% decline in sales of hardcover, which is by far the segment’s largest format, accounting for 59% of revenue in the quarter.
Source: Publishers Weekly
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