Digital book sales have been in a state of freefall all year long, in the United States. eBook revenues were down 8.3% for the month as compared to April 2021 for a total of $84.3 million. The Downloaded Audio format was up 5.6% for April, coming in at $66.6 million in revenue. Physical Audio, such as CD’s was down 47.9% coming in at $1.2 million. Are trade sales, such as paperbacks and hardcovers making up for the decline?

Year-to-date eBook revenues were down 9.7% as compared to the first four months of 2021 for a total of $338.1 million. Digital audiobooks was up 3.4%, coming in at $261.1 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 31.5% coming in at $4.9 million.

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were down 8.9% in April, coming in at $685.7 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of April, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 16.8%, coming in at $232.4 million; Paperbacks were down 2.8%, with $251.9 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 22.0% to $14.1 million.

Year-to-date Trade revenues were down 1.0%, at $2.8 billion for the first four months of the year. Hardback revenues were down 6.8%, coming in at $974.0 million; Paperbacks were up 9.6%, with $1.0 billion in revenue; Mass Market was down 20.5% to $63.6 million; and Special Bindings were down 2.0%, with $56.1 million in revenue.

The post ebook revenue declined by 8.3% in April 2022 first appeared on Good e-Reader.