To All With Interests in The Mail:

Since 2008, the Carbon Balanced Paper initiative has been responsible for balancing 190,000 tons of CO2 and preserving high conservation value land. MIDLAND is now offering Carbon Balanced Paper in North America, administered by the Sustainable Paper Group, and in partnership with the World Land Trust (WLT), an international conservation charity. This is a well-established and successful program in Europe with over 3,000 organizations taking positive action by choosing carbon balanced paper to preserve the most critically endangered places on earth, acre by acre. The launch in North America will help organizations reduce the carbon footprint of their printed media and meet their commitments toward carbon reduction by addressing the unavoidable carbon emissions from the paper manufacturing process. At the same time, choosing Carbon Balanced Paper allows organizations to simply and effectively differentiate themselves as market leaders in environmental responsibility. “MIDLAND is excited to announce the first major Carbon Balanced Paper initiative in North America. Many of our customers have stated objectives to reduce their net carbon impact, and Carbon Balanced Paper is an effective and credible tool to help them achieve these important sustainability goals.”, states David Goldschmidt, President of Midland’s National division.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today released its StatShot report for April 2023 reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Higher Education Course Materials, and Professional Publishing. Total revenues across all categories for April 2023 were down 7.6% as compared to April 2022, coming in at $732.3 million. Year-to-date revenues were up 0.9%, at $3.9 billion for the first four months of the year. Trade (Consumer Books) revenues were down 11.2% in April, coming in at $605.7 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of April, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 9.2%, coming in at $218.1 million; Paperbacks were down 16.3%, with $208.9 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 10.7% to $12.7 million; and Special Bindings were down 2.8%, with $12.3 million in revenue.

Last week Penguin Random House reported that it had a 23.3% increase in profits in 2020 over 2019 on a 4.6% gain in revenue, capping a remarkable year for America’s five biggest trade publishers that report financial results. Despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic, all five had annual increases in both earnings and sales. Higher sales of e-books and digital audiobooks and solid gains of backlist titles helped drive the revenue and profit gains. Online sales also rose in the year, offsetting soft sales through bookstores due to pandemic-induced lockdowns. According to PRH parent company Bertelsmann, PRH US had a particularly good year and drove the overall gains for the publisher. PRH US accounted for just over 58% of PRH’s total revenue, or roughly $2.59 billion. In 2019, the U.S. represented 56% of PRH revenue (about $2.2 billion).