Book Industry Stats for Australian Authors / Publishing Stats 2023
Here’s a running list of useful and interesting stats and data about writing, being an author, and the Australian and global publishing industry. I’ll add to this list throughout 2023 so bookmark this page to return to it over time.
How many books do bookstores return to publishers?
Approximately 15% of books are returned by bookstores to publishers under what is known as ‘sale or return’. Statistic quoted in the Inside the Green Room podcast episode ‘Bookseller’ (Feb 2023) and you can read more about it in my blog post/find the link to listen to it here.
Australian Amazon Kindle stats
- 50% of Australians only read between one and five books in 2022.
- Physical books remain the majority of books read (67.9%).
- The most popular genre is mystery (31%), followed by true crime (26%), non-fiction (24%) and romance (20%).
Source: ‘Read All About It‘, an article about the latest Amazon Kindle research, Thuy On on ArtsHub, 19 Jan 2023
Audiobook Market Stats from ALLi June 2023 Newsletter
The Audio Publishers Association’s latest report suggests the audiobook market grew by more than 10% for an 11th year, with revenue in the format hitting an estimated $1.8bn in the US in 2022.
This contrasts with the American Association of Publishers’ latest Statshot report, which has the digital audiobook market at 10.4% of a $28bn total book market. This report rates that as just a 2.6% rise. But that puts it within touching distance of the 10.8% that digital ebooks occupy. And contrasts with ebooks’ 8.5% decline.
Of course, readers who’ve spent any time at all in these parts will know that these figures are all incredibly problematic as they fail to account for a huge number of indie sales. That is one reason why ALLi launched its Indie Author Income Survey.