EBOOKS FUEL GROWTH IN TRADE PUBLISHING

Fueled by a year of strong new releases and even more widespread popularity of e-books, BookStats reports that trade publishing (adult and juvenile fiction and nonfiction, and religion) experienced significant growth in calendar year 2012. While the US book industry remained relatively flat overall in 2012 at $27.1B, the trade sector grew significantly from $14.08B to $15.049B.This growth occurred despite the loss of numerous brick-and-mortar stores and a lower cost for e-books than print books, which translated to higher quantities of e-books sold. The consistent growth of e-books demonstrates that publishers have successfully evolved the technology environment for their content -- more so than other historically print-based content industries. E-books grew 45% since 2011 and now constitute 20% of the trade market.