The U.S. book and journal publishing industry generated $27.78 billion in net revenue for 2015, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) StatShot Annual survey.
While the volume of books sold was up in 2015 reaching 2.71 billion in units from 2.7 in 2014, revenues dropped slightly from $27.96 billion in 2014. Trade books grew slightly in both revenue and volume in 2015 (chart below). The AAP attributed the decline to a tough year in the education markets, which makes up about one-third of tracked revenues.
The annual StatShot figure includes sales for trade (fiction/non-fiction/religious), K-12 instructional materials, higher education course materials, university presses and professional books.