June saw a 7.1 percent drop in bookstore sales, and July wasn’t any better: The monthly estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show another 7.4 percent decline, chipping away even further at the bookstore market’s advances over the first half of the year and reducing their gains in 2008 to just 1.7 percent, well behind the 3.2 percent gains shown throughout the retail sector.
Of course, some perspective may be in order: As several observers pointed out yesterday, America’s financial infrastructure has a lot more significant breakdowns going on at the moment than whatever’s happening in publishing and bookselling. And if nobody’s sold a book about that in the last few days, you can expect one by the end of September!