on about books we delve into the

latest news about the publishing industry? interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books the latest book reviews and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured c-span spoke tv. and welcome to about books. in a few minutes we're going to chat with brant akonnor books, industry analyst at turkana, about book sales numbers in the united in the first quarter of 2024. but first, here are some of the latest news from, the publishing world well, publishers have now joined penguin random house in its federal suit, challenging an iowa state law that prohibits books featuring descriptions, sex acts in k through 12 school libraries and classrooms. hachette, harpercollins, mcmillan, simon schuster and sourcebooks have signed on to that lawsuit challenging.

iowa state file for nine six. as it's known in a joint statement, the publishers quote, the alarming rise book bans across the country demands. our collective action now than ever. we must stand firmly with our and readers to defend fundamental right to read and freedom of expression. recent pennymac pca analysis found more than 4000nsnces of bans or attempted book bans in more than 50 public school districts across. the country from july to december. of 2023. in other, politico reported that simon & schuster has withdrawn a contract for a book. president joe biden that was being written by axios national political reporter alex. politico attributed the move to the lack of demand for books about president biden. the publication noted sales numbers for chris whipple's, the fight of his life and as the last politician those two recent books about joe biden combined

for less than thousand copies sold on social media. alex thompson confirmed politico's report but said that he was still working on that book and, is aiming for a 2025 release with a new publisher. and speaking of simon and schuster, booktv viewers know simon schuster is celebrating 100 years of being in the publishing business. recently, book tv's peter glenn sat down with simon schuster, ceo jonathan karp, to talk about the company and its history. one of the key figures that mr. karp discussed was the late simon and schuster editor alice mayhew. she was, known as the queen of the beltway book. here's part of that conversation. jonathan karp and peter slen. alice was one of the reasons i wanted to come to work at simon and schuster. i would say that. alice. alice, with some of the greatest authors of our time and some of them are still with, most notably, walter isaacson, bob

woodward, david maraniss. she was an extraordinary person and editor. she cared deeply about, her authors, and she was constantly in touch with them. doris kearns goodwin, who i have had the real great and pleasure to work with after passed away, i began working with with doris, and we're about to publish. doris is next book. it's coming out in april, and it's called an unfinished love story. and it's one of the greatest experiences i've had as an editor working with doris. and alice was her her champion for decades starting i with no ordinary time and team of rivals, alice worked with bob woodward on all of his books and it was a true a true, respectful editorial. and i and in fact, when alice passed away, i think all three of those authors dedicated their

books to her. she was a great editor and and we miss her. and for those of us in washington, she was informally known as the queen of. the beltway book books about, washington nonfiction books. so she was and she also refused to give an interview. and i and i beg begged her and i, you know, and i, i tried so hard, you know, the wall street journal was going to put her on the front page. she do it and, you know, so i, i really would like to pay homage to her. she she was just in she was the arena with author and had such incredible curiosity. i think that she started with i think, i believe the john dean's book blind ambition that actually her title she she also worked with augustus many taylor branch who we still publish his award winning his award winning

series on martin king his trilogy. alice all those books and she was relentless she when she when she wanted to sign up a book there was no her and and she and she really went the extra mile for her authors. and she's she really is the personification of of what an editor is, what what i hope a simon and schuster editor will always be. and and it's a plan we very much to keep alive. and you can watch a longer interview with jonathan karp about the hundredth anniversary of simon and schuster on our website at booktv dot org. and now a look at the us book market in the first quarter of 2024, joining us is brett connor, a books analyst at the market research group, sakata brett connor second of just released its first quarter snapshot shot for 2024. so how did the us book industry do in the first three months of this year?

yep. so in the first quarter of 2024, book sales reached, 195 million units, which is down 3% compared to what we measured in the first quarter of 2023. but i want to put that into context because we're coming off of some of the highest volume years we've ever tracked in bookscan. so our data goes back to 2004. we have 20 years of history and. 2021 was the highest volume year that we've ever tracked in bookscan in 2022 was the second highest. so even though we're seeing seen softer sales when we compare to prior, we're still very strong by historical standards. so i like to measure versus 2019 because 2019 was kind of our last normal year in the book market. this was before the pandemic. this was before book talk. so q1 sales versus q1 in 2019 are actually up 18%. so very healthy and strong

market. so who's selling and what genres are selling in 2020 for sure. so the bright spots of growth in q1 include adult as well as young adult fiction. the fiction market has been very strong, really sends 20 and the emergence of book talk and that continues to be case in the start of this year at the category level where watching we're watching the fantasy category post the most gains but we're also seeing growth among a number of other areas including thrillers and science fiction. one category we saw kind of mentions in its first quarter report is sea. what is romantic? see sure. so romantic sea is a portmanteau that combines romance and fantasy. it's a romance that takes place in a fantasy setting and romantic, certainly behind a lot of the growth that we're watching within the fantasy

category right now, the dominate authors are sarah jane moss along with rebecca frost. but those beyond those authors that are driving a lot of the growth, we do see a variety of others posting gains. so growth is coming from a diverse author list. sarah j. moss with some 3.1 million print books sold in the first quarter of 2024, according to the latest circrna report. it might be a good time to stop and explain what circrna is and what bookscan is. sure. yeah, that's a great question. so i can certainly talk more about so bookscan is a dataset that measures book sales in the us. the way that we get to this data is through retail pos data. so we partnerships with more than thousand retailers who provide us point of sale and then we aggregate that data a

weekly basis. we benchmark our coverage at. 5% of the us print book market and our panel includes of the major retailers that you would so amazon and barnes and noble. we also have big box stores like target and walmart and many other stores and then i also want to mention that we have over 900 independent bookstores including in our channel. so when you say we benchmark our numbers at 85% of the market, does that mean that numbers that you point out in your report are there's parts of the book market that you don't capture in this report? that's correct. so areas of the market that we don't include libraries, they also we're not tracking anything that library does our purchasing and then we also don't have full coverage into the self-published book market. so our data is really focused on trade channels. and how often is sakata putting out these reports and who is the

end user for information that you put out? sure. so our data is updated on a weekly basis and we have kind of a number teams that help us do that. so we have technology team and a product team and a data quality team that are all working on the back end to make sure that our data is released on time and that our data remains. so we're tracking about 13 million units each week across more 16,000 retail locations. so as you can imagine, quite lot of effort goes into making sure that our data is accurate and, released timely in terms of who uses our data. of course, publishers use our data, literary agents are also using our data book retailers as well as. media outlets so on booktv we often mostly focus on nonfiction books. how did nonfiction book sales do

in the first quarter of 2024, especially compared to 2023? adult nonfiction been struggling. part of the for the last few years. adult nonfiction sales are down in the first quarter of the year compared to last year. the category that's driving the decline is by, but we are against q1. last year when prince harry spare released there was the number one overall bestselling book of 2023. so we're comping against some of those higher sales, but even when we exclude spare, there's other categories posting softer sales. so this includes things like self-help and business. when was the last time a nonfiction or a biography did as well in sales as spare? that's a good question. think that it would be michelle obama's become in. that was a a top seller a

bestseller certainly. and the unique thing about sphere is that it sold a lot of units very quickly so i think it hit 1 million in print unit sales within the first month of release and obama is becoming also did the same. so what are the nonfiction books that are selling right now? so celebrity biography was a big one. so of course there fits into this. but britney spears memoir, that was released last year was also a top seller and a number of other celebrity memoirs are doing quite well. and then the other thing i'd like to bring up as relates to adult nonfiction is that i think some of the softer sales that we're watching in the print market be explained by a format shift. so i think that there's some readers that are switching their print book reading for, audiobook reading and particularly in the adult nonfiction market and the reason behind thinking is because the categories that we're softer

sales for in print are actually growing in the audiobook. and why is that happening now? we've been talking about audiobooks for a long time. audiobooks have been showing double digit gains for last ten years and. they continue to be the fastest growing format. i think this is an area where kind of new readers are really coming in and engaging with audiobooks, where they may not have engaged with print spotify, of course, has also helped to grow sales in the audiobook market. so spotify releasing, you know, a number of free hours for premium users to be able to listen to audiobooks. so i think spotify is helping with that growth. how does that compare to the adult fiction? so the sarah jane moss and the rebecca, are they also doing equally well in the audiobook sales, the numbers that you're reporting in print book sales fiction is a strong area in, the

audiobook market, but it really vary by author. so there a james is doing better in print formats but you know takeaway titles sometimes i notice that audio sales are stronger than print sales in one recent title that comes to mind, ann patchett's leak. so this was released in august of last year and, in the first month of sales, her audiobook sales actually surpassed her print book sales. and i think a big driver of that was because she had meryl streep narrating the audiobook. can you talk about kristin hannah's the women for a second a book that sold about 100,000 copies or units more the next best bestseller just in the month of march. yeah so kristin hannah always does. well releases a new book really each spring and when her books

released, they always are topping the bestseller lists. and kristin hannah doing well. but another author that did almost twice as many just in the month of march was dave pitney of the series dog man. what is dog? man yes, so it's dave pilkey and dog man is a middle grade comic and graphic novel series. dave pilkey is i mean, i guess a similar story to kristin hannah where once a new release hits, he tops the bestseller list. but dave pilkey is one of the overall bestselling authors in the children's market. and his dog series is a very popular and then just staying on the children's for a while for folks who don't these numbers month after month in these reports they might be surprised that an author from the 1960s continues to have multiple bestsellers in the children's books. dr. seuss.

yes. dr. is often the one overall bestselling author our dataset so we can look at bestselling titles. but then when we group i'll titles under a certain author and look it by author dr. seuss is often number one, if not certainly in the top five each year. he has a number of perennial bestsellers that are hitting the bestseller list. so all the places you will appear, our march or our may bestseller list of, you know, graduations, and then his titles always do well in march because of seuss week. so this week is a reading that many schools and libraries celebrate, and it coincides with theodore geisel's birthday. so is another popular month for dr. seuss book purchases. brenda carter how long have you been in the book industry tracking business?

sure. so i have been on the team here at circrna for the last five years, but i began my career in marketing. and how do you get into this work. that's a good question. i have loved books since i was a small child. books have always been an important part of my life growing up. my favorite thing to do the weekend was go to barnes and noble with my mom so. i was an english major in college and. i'd hoped to work in the publishing which proved be somewhat tricky to navigate because i was not from the new york area. i didn't have a lot of contacts within publishing, so i began working in marketing instead i started off at a marketing agency and. then i moved to market, which with was with npd at the time. so the npd group acquired the

books team from nielsen in 2017. and when i was on marketing team, that was kind of the first time that i realized there was a book group that did this and i knew that i wanted to be a part of it. so i began working on the books in 2019, a position opened up and i was lucky enough to get it so really i brought with me, you know, my love for books and pretty good understanding as to how companies use data to, you know, answer a business question or create strategies so i was lucky enough to get the role and then it was also up with some vigorous analyst training and to of advance my technical skills and my analytical skills and. learn to analyze data from a category management perspective. so now i get to kind of combine love of books with my analytical and it's a good fit. is it okay for an industry

analyst to say what you're reading now and what genres you like to read? that is okay, yes so i am primarily a fiction reader. i tend to read in print format, although i do also include some audiobook in my reading diet. so i recently. percival everett's james which was fantastic also as an english major and you know, someone who appreciates classics. i always liked huckleberry finn, so very cool. what percival everett did with james and then i did start reading sarah james of court of thorns and roses series. i had to understand what the hype was. sarah james has been dominating the bestseller list this bestselling author year to date so far. and i needed to understand why i'm on book two in that series. and i into it. and i understand why so many people are enjoying it. just one of the 3.1 million

print books sold in the first three months of this year by sarah jane moss. your reports always include a look ahead key trends to watch, one that jumped out to me from your latest report is that books are cool again. yep. so i think that most us in the world of books and reading and people who in this industry have always thought that books are cool. but now this idea is expanding. so we're watching a rise in engagement. young people on tik tok, you know, of course, talking about the books that they are enjoying book talk. we're also watching beauty and fashion influence stories use their platform to talk about books they're reading in the books. they're excited about. we see new celebrity book clubs emerging from celebrities like kaia gerber and dua lipa and even the bookshelf.

well, design esthetic is trendy. so this is you celebrating folks that have a great number of books and shout them in beautiful ways. so all of these point to the idea that books cool again. it's cool to be seen with a book. it's cool to be reading a book. it's cool to be carrying a book, an accessory, or even using books to decorate your home and. then final question for you, brenna. connor trends to watch in the final three quarters of 2024. sure. so i think that we'll see continued strength in the adult fiction market for sure. so why fiction? i think that many consumer groups are seeking an escape from exhaustion and the anxiety that, you know, has been brought on by the last few years, but also will continue the year ahead. so, you know, this is, of course, related to and economic and household and employment

uncertainty. yes. so i think that consumers will be seeking uplifting stories in the year ahead. i think will continue to benefit some of the category that we're already watching grow like fantasy and science fiction. but i think it will carry over into growth for literary fiction, fiction as well as even romance. brenna connor is a director and industry analyst at circrna, and we appreciate your time with booktv. thank you. and this is about books is a program and podcast produced by. c-span booktv. well, each week dozens of new books are published. here's a few. bestselling doris kearns goodwin is out with her latest book, which is part biography, part memoir and part history. it's titled an unfinished love story a personal history of the sixties. and it focuses ms. goodwin and her husband, richard, the final years of his life. another bestselling author, korda, is out with a new book, world war one and the lives of

the soldier poets who experienced the horrors of trench warfare. mr. quarters new book is titled use of fire and in knife meditations an attempted murder. author salman rushdie offers his account the august 12th, 2020 to knife attack that nearly took his life. the british american novelist was left blind in one eye from that attack that place during an appearance at a new york center. the incident came than 30 years after iranians supreme leader ayatollah khomeini called mr. rushdie to be killed, publishing his book the satanic verses and to upcoming to note. former house speaker nancy pelosi is releasing the art power on august the sixth. according to publisher simon schuster, the book will her personal account of the events of january 6th, 2021. ms. pelosi's previous book was know your a message to america's daughters, which came out in 2008.

simon and schuster also announced recently that had penned a deal with michigan democratic gretchen whitmer to release book about her life and career. it's titled true gretch and is set to be released on july the ninth. the simon and schuster press release quoted governor as saying, no matter who are or what you hope to achieve, i hope this book will help you find the good and use it to make a difference. she went on to say, in this moment, our world is thirsty for compassion empathy, big ideas and the grit get stuff done and governor didn't use the word stuff. and this week on, book tv's afterwords program usa, today's susan page discusses the and career of journalist barbara. she was interviewed by abc news white house correspondent ann compton. here's a preview. you know we struggled a little with it with the title and i would ask people, what should i title this this biography of barbara walters d people suggested things like million

dollar or baba wawa. i mean, these were actually slings, arrows that she endured. and it was interesting that that's what came to mind. i was some people when i when i talked about a biography of barbara walters, but it was my it was my editor at simon schuster, priscilla peyton, who said, she really strikes me as a rule and rule breaker seemed to be exactly right, because barbara walters broke every rule around. and, you know, she didn't just break rules. she ignored them. she pretended she couldn't see them. so the idea that a a woman couldn't do serious interviews, she just ignored and went ahead and scheduled a series interviews. the idea that a woman can be paid as much as a man, well, she certainly blew that idea up. the idea later in life that a woman could age on tv, you know, she was 67 when she embarked her last big adventure, the view you the abc talk show. so rule breakers seemed to me to be exact, right. a reminder that airs every

sunday at 10 p.m. eastern on booktv. well, thanks for joining us for about books. a program and podcast produced by c-span's booktv. we'll continue to bring you publishing news and programs, a reminder that you get this program on the c-span now app. and you can also watch our programs online. any time at booktv dot org.

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