Q2 Publishing Sales Rose 27.6% at IDW (publishersweekly.com)

The Book Manufacturers’ Institute (BMI) released the December results for its monthly survey on capacity and lead times for soft cover and hard cover books.. This month held fairly steady on capacities but showed lead times continuing to decline. According to responses regarding hard cover books, the average manufacturer was running at 82% of their capacity, equal to October and November. The average lead time for completed hard cover books went down to 50 days from 59 days, continuing the trend. For soft cover books, capacity usage stayed similar at 82% compared to 81% last month. The average lead time dropped to 33 days from 38 days, continuing that trend as well.

Highlights:*Underlying revenue down 17% on prior year largely due to COVID-19*Group sales decline largely reflects test centre and school closures in Global Assessment and International. After deterioration from March to May we saw improving sales trends in June.*Global Online Learning sales grew 5% due to strong enrolments in new and existing schools in Virtual Schools and slight revenue growth in OPM with good growth in continuing programs offset by discontinued programs.*Global Assessment declined 27% due to the impact of test centre closures in Professional Certification (Pearson VUE), cancellation of spring testing in Student Assessment and school closures impacting Clinical Assessments.*North American Courseware declined 14% with US Higher Education Courseware declining in line with expectations due to the continuation of trends seen in 2019, and a modest impact from the closure of campus-based bookstores. We saw a weaker performance in courseware in Canada largely as a result of school and bookstore closures. *International declined 23% due to the disruption in businesses which rely on physical locations including school and test centre closures.

A host of new titles and a solid performance by the adult segments led to a 4.7% increase in unit sales of print books last week over the week ended October 8, 2022 at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. Adult fiction returned to its winning ways with sales up 7.1%. There was no single blockbuster driving sales, but five new releases were among the category’s top 10 bestsellers. Hannah Grace’s Wildfire took the #1 spot, selling nearly 60,000 copies. Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, Vol. 12 was in third place, selling over 33,000 copies, followed by Judgment Prey by John Sandford, which sold more than 28,000 copies.