November’s Book Sales Down an Unlucky 13 Percent

Just about everybody warned or believed last November was going to be a sucky month for retail, and they were right: According to preliminary figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the entire retail sector took a 10% punch to the gut, and bookstores took an even worse hit, with sales down 13 percent from where they were in November 2007. That decline means that book sales for the first eleven months of last year were “flat” compared to the year before—which is, at least, 0.7 percent better than the retail industry as a whole.

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