BMI Releases Industry Barometer Survey Results for January

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court’s March 2023 opinion in favor of publishers Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House, finding Internet Archive liable for copyright infringement and rejecting all four factors of Internet Archive’s fair use argument. The Court squarely addressed the question of whether it is “fair use” for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to an asserted one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, without any authorization from the copyright owner.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today released its StatShot report for January 2021 reflecting reported revenue for all tracked categories, including Trade (Consumer Books), K-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses. Total revenues across all categories for January 2021 were up 10.3% as compared to January 2020, coming in at $1.2 billion. Trade (Consumer Books) sales were up 21.3% in January, coming in at $689.5 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of January, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were up 25.5%, coming in at $244.2 million; Paperbacks were up 17.9%, with $227.5 million in revenue; Mass Market was up 39.9% to $19.5 million; and Board Books were down 3.4%, with $17.2 million in revenue.

Costco Wholesale Corporation reported net sales of $15.67 billion for the retail month of November, the four weeks ended November 29, 2020, an increase of 15.1 percent from $13.62 billion last year. For the twelve-week first quarter ended November 22, 2020, the Company reported net sales of $42.35 billion, an increase of 16.9 percent from $36.24 billion last year. For the thirteen weeks ended November 29, 2020, the Company reported net sales of $46.33 billion, an increase of 16.0 percent from $39.95 billion during the similar period last year.