During BEA, the Book Industry Study Group released statistics on book sales and buying habits during 2006, reports the New York Times’ Motoko Rich. Publishers sold 3.1 billion books in 2006, up just 0.5 percent from the 3.09 billion sold the year before, according to Book Industry Trends 2007, an annual report that looks at sales in the United States. As a result of higher retail book prices, net revenue climbed 3.2 percent, to $35.7 billion from $34.6 billion. Competition from other media is stronger than ever, the overall economy remains tight and, said BISG senior researcher Albert Greco to the AP, the industry may be too old to expect truly dramatic expansion. “The book business has been around for centuries. It’s a mature business, and it’s hard to get tremendous growth.”
Meanwhile, a new study attempts to understand the buying habits of the average American women. According to the Women and Books 2007 study, she is 45, married, has a bachelor’s degree, lives in a large city (population of 500,000 or more) and possesses an annual household income of $88,625. Among the many statistics generated, the study found the average woman purchased an average of 28 books for herself or others, spending $280 on non-fiction titles and $147 on fiction titles. More than 2,000 women took the comprehensive survey and 1,601 responses were validated for use in the study’s final results.