It may come as little (or no) surprise to many, but the book industry was particularly hard-hit in 2008, if rough estimates released today are anywhere in the ballpark of the actual numbers. But the numbers are a little hard to read.
What starts off as a slight downturn (2.8% decrease) seems rebuked by the note that book sales have actually increased by about half that amount over the last six years (1.6%), however overall numbers - both by category and in summation - show a marked decline in book sales, as a whole ("compound annual growth rate" notwithstanding).
Perhaps most interesting was the 21% drop in audiobooks sales. Though not mentioned in the report, the first lawsuit filed in Sweden was by a publishing house which targeted a user believed to have hundreds of thousands of audiobooks available for download on his servers.
The actual figures can be found in this PDF, prepared by Management Practice, Inc.
© C Harris Lynn, 2009
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