From Publishing Perspectives:
In her final report from 2022, NPD Books executive director and industry analyst Kristen McLean writes, “This holiday season was another reminder that we remain in uncharted territory in the United States’ consumer market, and that it’s important to take each week as it comes.”
In fact, she reports, the US market had print sales for 2022 at 3 percent of 2020, and 12-percent ahead of 2019 on a unit basis. That qualifies last year as the second-highest in print performance since NPD BookScan began tracking the market.
The irony, she points out, is that by comparison to 2021’s holiday season, the closing 13 weeks in 2022 dropped by 8 percent. This, despite the fact that December’s performance was better, she says, “because of deferred buying and a relatively strong last two weeks.
“This held the overall year-to-date performance to 5.8-percent lower on a unit basis, and 5-percent lower on an $MSRP basis, with volumes of 780 million units and $14 billion, respectively.”
McLean—whose point-of-sale data service focuses on print, remember, rather than on other formats—says, “A good deal of the buying and reading behavior that started in the pandemic is still with us, although not every area of the business is benefiting equally.”
And in terms of that comment she makes about “uncharted territory,” she writes, “Big questions remain about book consumers’ appetites as we look ahead.”
Illustrating the 8-percent drop in the 2022 holiday season as compared to the 2021 season in volume, McLean writes, “The kids’ market made up half of the year-over-year declines. Holiday shopping shifted later—the last two weeks of the year were the only in the 2022 holiday season to post gains over the same time in 2021.”
In her description of the course of the 2022 market in the States, McLean notes that during the holidays, “Sales plateaued at 29 million units for two weeks in a row. Weeks 51 and 52 were the only two that overperformed 2021 in last year’s holidays. “As a result,” she says, “the market regained 1 percent of year-to-date performance, ending 6-percent under 2021, and 12-percent ahead of 2019.”
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives