Finance

Sales of adult trade books rose 8.9% through the first nine months of 2020 over the comparable period in 2019, and sales in the children/young adult segment increased 7.7% for publishers that report sales to AAP’s StatShot program.

Third-quarter sales rose 37% over 2019 and earnings soared at the e-commerce giant. The company said it has seen signs that customers are indeed shopping early, something retailers of all kinds are pushing for to avoid lost sales if Covid-19 cases surge closer to the end of the holiday shopping season.

A 55% increase in digital sales plus higher online revenue led to a 10% increase in sales while pre-tax profits more than doubled at Bloomsbury in the six-month period ended August 31, 2020.

Sales of downloadable audio jumped 32% in August over a year ago and e-book sales rose 14.6%. With hardcover sales up 29% in the month, sales of adult books rose 13.2% in August, according to AAP's BookStat. Total industry sales inched up 0.3% in the month.

Net earnings for the second quarter ended August 31, 2020, soared at Educational Development Corp., jumping to $4.2 million, from $1 million, in the second quarter ended last August. Revenue rose 142.5%, to $59.2 million.

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 7.6% in the quarter ended September 30, the PW Stock Index fell 6.1%, with companies involved in the educational market hit hardest.

Cost cuts improved Scholastic's bottom line in the first quarter, but sales at book fairs and book clubs tumbled during the period, and are expected to remain low in the current quarter.

Sales of adult books rose 20.9% in the month over July 2019, and sales in the children/young adult category increased 14.5%, according to AAP's StatShot program. Sales in the K-12 instructional materials category fell 24.9% compared to last July, while sales in the higher educational course materials segment fell 21.9%.

Higher sales of a range of digital and online products offset continued declines in print revenue, leading to a 2% increase in sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 at John Wiley & Sons.

A good performance in the U.S. plus higher digital and online sales helped to soften the blow of the Covid-19 pandemic across Penguin Random House's global operations in the first half of 2020, parent company Bertelsmann said.