Religion Print Sales Up 12% in First Half of 2024 (publishersweekly.com)

*Comparable sales down 1.5% on an owned basis and down 1.6% on an owned-plus-licensed basis; up 4.3% and 4.4%, respectively, versus the second quarter of 2019. *Digital sales decreased 5% year-over-year while increasing 37% versus the second quarter of 2019. *Macy’s comparable sales were down 2.9% on an owned basis and down 2.8%, on an owned-plus-licensed basis. *Bloomingdale’s comparable sales on an owned basis were up 8.8% and on an owned-plus-licensed basis were up 5.8%. *Bluemercury comparable sales were up 7.6% on an owned and owned-plus-licensed basis. *Inventory turnover, on a trailing twelve-month basis, was relatively flat to 2021 and improved 15% over 2019. *Gross margin for the quarter was 38.9%, down from 40.6% in the second quarter of 2021.

Did you know MIDLAND has been a proud supporter of the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) for well over a decade, as both a member and an active sponsor? With how much of our customers’ catalog budget goes towards paper and postage, we firmly believe it’s the right thing to do. We wanted to provide an update on what the ACMA is currently focusing on and a call to action of how you can choose to help. For those not already familiar with the ACMA, they are a non-profit organization founded in 2007. The ACMA is the only industry association advocating specifically for catalog, online, direct mail, and other remote-selling merchants, as well as their suppliers. In recent years, the ACMA has had successes for the entire industry in postal enhancements, consumer privacy, and remote sales tax. Let’s look at some of the numbers. Our industry has seen five postage rate increases in the past 2.5 years. This is an average compounded increase of 39.6% for catalogs.

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.