Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Major UK publishers’ ebook sales up 15%

In the UK, the top six trade publishers recorded a total 15.5% rise in ebook sales in 2020, the first double-digit percentage bump in seven years, reports the Bookseller.

Collectively, Hachette, Penguin Random House (PRH), HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury and Simon & Schuster sold 54.5 million consumer ebooks through UK retailers in 2020, up from the 47.2 million in 2019.

‘While acquisitions have affected these numbers over the years, 2020 upended the trend of recent years of flattening ebook returns,’ the Bookseller writes. ‘That the upsurge was due to shifting patterns of readers’ behaviour during the lockdowns is evidenced by all the publishers having percentage jumps, the first time this has happened since the panel began [in 2012].’

According to the Bookseller, Hachette was found to have recorded the most ebook sales in 2020, with around 20 million sales, ahead of PRH (15 million) and HarperCollins (11.7 million).

Elsewhere, the Bookseller estimates that PRH was the largest trade publisher in the UK print market in 2020, with around 21% market share, ahead of Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan.

 

Category: International news