The Publishers Association (PA) has released the PA Statistics Yearbook according to which, digital sales accounted for 12 percent of UK publishers' total revenues of £3.3 billion in 2012. Publishers' total sales revenues - physical and digital - rose 4 percent. Total digital sales rose 66 percent, to £411 million, and total fiction digital sales rose 149 per cent, to £172 million.
The PA Yearbook 2012 also recorded an increase of 4 percent in home physical sales of children's books, and an increase of 6 percent in home physical sales of school books. Total physical sales of fiction books were also up, by 3 percent. Physical and digital sales of fiction books were up by 21 percent, and digital sales of non-fiction/reference books were up 95 percent.
The Yearbook represents publishers' total sales revenues, home and export, by contrast with Nielsen BookScan (UK retail sales) and Bowker's Books & Consumers (UK consumer book sales). It is based on the Publishers Association Sales Monitor (PASM) data collection scheme, reflecting data compiled from about 270 publishers representing 78 percent of UK publishers' sales; the annual PASM Digital Survey; and a benchmarking exercise that enables the compiler of the data, Bowker, to adjust the PASM figures to represent the entire UK publishing industry.
