What we do know, by simply looking at the digital charts, is that APub shifts huge numbers of ebooks uncounted by the AAP, and we also know Amazon pays out serious money every month to self-publishers using its Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service.

The AAP’s May 2024 StatShot, released just before the weekend, paints a glowing picture of a US publishing industry blooming, with a 10.9% boost for May, and a rise of 5.5% year-to-date.

The usual caveats are that the Association of American Publishers is reporting revenues from trade, religious presses, higher education course materials, preK-12 instructional materials and professional publishing, and this data comes from about 180,000 publishers that does not include APub, most small presses and excludes all self-publishing revenues.

Per the AAP, “trade (Consumer Books) revenues were up 16.5% in May, coming in at $789.1 million.”

For print, hardcover and paperback revenues were pretty close, with hardcover revenues up 21.0% to $289.1 million, while paperbacks were up 16.7%, with $289.6 million in revenue. The AAP adds, “Mass Market was up 118.2% to $11.2 million; and Special Bindings were up 28.4%, with $13.6 million in revenue.”

Ebooks also saw a rise, albeit lower at 2.2% up compared to May 2023, with $84.4 million baked, while digital audio rose 15.3% for May, banking $80.2 million.

Click through to the AAP website for the rest. Hardcover, paperback and audiobooks are well-represented by the AAP numbers, although neither will include APub’s revenues from these formats.

More importantly, the ebook numbers are likely to be way off the mark once we factor in APub, small press and self-published ebook revenues.

What we do know, by simply looking at the digital charts, is that APub shifts huge numbers of ebooks uncounted by the AAP, and we also know Amazon pays out serious money every month to self-publishers using its Kindle Unlimited ebook subscription service.

And we do have a figure for the self-published revenue from Kindle Unlimited, as Amazon publishes the monthly pot payout, which for May amounted to $52.5 million, which by the magic of maths tells us total ebook revenues for May came to at least $136.9 million.

I stress at least, because self-publishers also sell ebooks a la carte on Amazon and other retail sites and are on other subscription services, small presses that do not report to the AAP are on Amazon and other platforms, and of course APub itself dominates both the Kindle retail and subscription charts day in day out.

The AAP gives us a year to date eBook revenue tally of $422.5 million for the first five month s of 2024, so for the record Kindle Unlimited paid out (just to self-publishers, not to APub and small presses) $258.3 million, which again with caveats as previous paragraph, takes year-to-date ebook revenue to $680.8.

And that’s just for trade. We can add another $23.6 million from religious ebooks, sending us over the $700 million mark, again excluding the uncounted APub sales and subscription revenue and the uncounted self-published a la carte sales.

And we can safely assume a serious wad more cash coming in from the other sectors that the AAP does not break down by format.

Real ebook revenues will remain guestimates, but by any measure this is serious cash coming in for publishers and authors despite the popular narrative that ebooks are in decline.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.