Australian market report: Children’s, YA and educational continue to drive growth; industry welcomes government AI stance

The latest consolidation in the Australian market is Hachette Australia’s acquisition of lifestyle and gift publisher Smith Street Books, a 10-year-old independent that will continue to operate as three distinct Smith Street imprints under the agreement.

It’s the most recent in a series of acquisitions by larger publishers of independents – including Affirm Press, acquired by Simon & Schuster; Pantera Press, acquired by Hardie Grant, which recently announced Pantera titles would be published across its existing imprints in future; and Text Publishing, which was acquired by Penguin Random House (PRH) in 2025 and has continued to operate separately, but was physically brought into the PRH offices this year.

The dominance of major publishers is also reflected in 2025 sales information from NielsenIQ BookData, which reported that four of the top 10 publishers outgrew the overall market for the year, with Scholastic, Hachette and PRH experiencing the strongest lifts.

Of course as independents are bought up, new publishers are rising in their place, including Bakers Lane Books, which joins the Australian Stand at Frankfurt for the first time this year.

Sales channels

In terms of where Australia’s book sales occurred, the story of consolidation continues, this time in the “chains and online” sales channel: while the overall market grew 3.2% in 2025, sales through chain stores and online grew by 4.7%, and sales through independents grew by only 1.4%.

The overall channel breakdown from Nielsen showed more than half (57.1%) of sales were through online and chains – a category that does include Australia’s larger independent bookselling chains. (Providing some context for this somewhat contentious channel grouping of chains and online: Nielsen’s Books & Consumer data showed that almost one in four self-reported purchases were at internet-only retailers.)

Outside of chains and online, the discount department stores channel represented 29.2% of sales in 2025 and independents had 13.7% of market share.

Sales for 2026

In the first quarter of 2026, sales in the local market continued to grow, representing $14 million more in sales compared with the first quarter of 2025 – growth of 5% by value and 1.3% by volume.

Following on from the same trends in 2025, the children’s, YA and educational category continues to lead growth in 2026, with Nielsen reporting the category was up 9.6% by value and 1.5% by volume. Growth in adult fiction also continues to surpass that in trade nonfiction: fiction was up 5.7% by value and 2.2% by volume for the quarter, while trade nonfiction was up 1.6% by value but down 0.5% by volume.

Presenting to booksellers in June 2026, NielsenIQ BookData Australia general manager Bianca Whiteley provided the context that while nonfiction was in decline by volume for the first quarter of 2026, this was against a very strong year for the category in 2025, when Mel Robbins’s The Let Them Theory ruled the charts. Whiteley pointed out that similarly in adult fiction, 2025 sales for the category were boosted by a key successful title – Onyx Storm (Rebecca Yarros) – and that sales in adult fiction so far in 2026 represented a “really strong result considering that”.

Whiteley reported that the categories with the largest value gains in 2026 so far are general and literary fiction (up 15%); graphic novels: manga (up 36%); children’s fiction (up 16%); crime, thriller and adventure (up 13%); and picture books (up 10%).

As previously reported, the book market for 2025 was up 3.2% in value on the previous year and up 1.4% in volume.

Full-year category results for 2025 showed adult fiction was up 4.9% at $431 million, while trade nonfiction dropped ever so slightly (-0.6%) to $439 million. Children’s, YA and educational also had strong growth, up 7.4% overall at $395 million for 2025.

Colouring books not what they were; Australian titles rise to the top in “crowded market”

A key trend boosting sales in 2025 and into 2026 has been colouring books (in fact, taking out colouring books there would have been a slight decline in volume for the Australian market in 2025). However, Whiteley shared data to show that this time around the colouring book trend isn’t quite so valuable as it was a decade ago.

In 2015 colouring book sales represented $38 million, with an average selling price of $13, while in 2025 the genre represented only $15 million, with an average selling price of around $8. Even at Christmas, said Whiteley, colouring book sales in 2025 were “well below” the same period in 2015.

Data from the first quarter of 2026 showed books are in what Whiteley admits is a “crowded market”. Presenting data for the year to date in June, Whitely reported that around 417,000 unique titles had been sold, compared with just over 782,000 for the whole of 2025.

According to TitlePage, the price and availability database operated by the Australian Publishers Association (APA), approximately 25,000 new Australian titles are published each year, while 2 million books, ebooks and journals are available for sale in the market.

In this crowded market, however, Whiteley says, “Australian authors do continue to rise to the top … particularly in [independent bookshops].”

Two Australian authors in particular rose to the top in 2025, making the global top 10 authors, according to NielsenIQ BookData: Nagi Maehashi in number 5 and Anh Do in number 10.

AI policy in Australia

AI continues to dominate publishing conversations in Australia, as it does worldwide. Locally, industry bodies including the Australian Publishers Association and the Australian Society of Authors have welcomed comments in July this year from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese regarding AI and copyright.

As the centre-left Australian government attempts to both attract data centre investment in the country and protect copyright law in the face of pressure from the AI companies investing in data centres, the industry has been anxious about any sign the latter might prevail. So it was a welcome sign when Albanese officially announced the creation of an Office of AI with a speech that strongly supported Australia’s existing copyright provisions.

“No company should use Australian books, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control,” said Albanese. “And that includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work.”

Category: Think Australian feature