According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), sales of religious books had its largest increase in more than a year in March, as overall book sales increased by 16.6% to $458.2 million and were up by 8% for the year.
The month’s sales for religious books rose 7% to $49.5 million,but were down by 3.5% for the year. Sales of religious books were down 1.7% to $46 million in February. Other than a small increase in December, the religious books category had been on a steady decline since January 2009.
As an aside, e-Book sales in all markets continue to skyrocket. Sales of $28.5 million reflected an increase of 184.8% over last March and 251.9% for the year.
Sales of religious books dipped 14.6% in January 2010 (the last month for which figures were available) according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP). This is in addition to the 14.6% decline reported in January 2009 when the overall decline became dominant.
The general book market decreased by only 0.7% in January.
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Miami, FL –Natural health expert and author Jordan Rubin has recovered $55,000 from Strang Communications in a dispute that revealed the faith-based publisher improperly withheld royalties payments for three years from the paperback edition of his New York Times bestseller The Maker’s Diet. Rubin said he was forced to file an arbitration claim after numerous requests and attempts to settle the matter were ignored, according to a news release from the author’s attorney.
“I wanted to believe this was an honest mistake,” said Rubin. “But Strang’s refusal to acknowledge our requests to review royalty statements eventually left me with no other remedy except to take legal action.” [Read More]
Amazon.com tried to use its considerable retailing clout to ban ebook titles published by Macmillan this week. In the end, they failed and the Macmillan ebooks where restored to the Kindle catalog. But in the process Amazon.com tipped its hand by showing a willingness to sacrifice publisher relations and customer convenience on the altar of their own higher profits. [Read More]
Debtwire.com has alleged that financially troubled Borders Bookstores has been paying large publishers on time but delaying payments to smaller independent publishers.
Major publishers reported they had been paid on time, but the average time to pay independent publishers jumped to 97.9 days, up from 64.9 days a year ago, according to Debtwire.com. [Read More]
