August Book Sales on the Upswing, Just Barely

The Association of American Publishers reports that the book sales it tracked for August 2009 were up 0.9 percent compared to last year—and that the tentative prognosis looks like another year of “stable but modest growth” as the first eight months of ’09 show a 2 percent increase in sales over the January-to-August range in 2008.

Adult hardcovers and paperbacks showed increases for the month but are still down overall for the year-to-date. Children’s and YA hardcovers dropped in August, but have built up a sufficient lead to still be up 14 percent for the year; paperbacks in this category only dipped 0.2 percent for August and are still up 1.7 percent for the year so far. Religious books… does anybody know what’s going on with religious books? They’re down 13.8 percent for the month and 9.2 percent for the year, and it seems like they’ve been going south for a while now. And yet this seems like a time of no small religious fervor, right?

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