Finance

Following steep declines in April and May, sales fell a relatively modest 4.1% in June compared to a year ago at publishers that report to AAP's StatShot program. June sales were up in the trade categories.

An improvement in fourth quarter profits for the period ended June 30, 2020, was not enough to prevent earnings for the full year at HarperCollins from dropping 15%, to $214 million. Revenue fell 5%, to $1.67 billion, compared to fiscal 2019.

A 38% plunge in sales in its education group in the second quarter of 2020 led to an overall decline of 35.5% in sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt compared to a year ago. Costs cuts limited the impact of the sales drop on the publisher's bottom line.

Lower production and distribution costs were enough to give Simon & Schuster a 9% increase in earnings in the second quarter, despite an 8% drop in sales. Digital revenue jumped 44% in the quarter.

Online sales at Amazon jumped 48% in the second quarter of 2020 over the comparable period in 2019, to $45.9 billion. Total revenue rose 40% and operating income skyrocketed 87%.

Final estimates from the AAP found a 1.1% increase in total industry sales in 2019 over 2018. Sales were estimated to be $25.93 billion. The increase was led by a 20.4% jump in sales in the preK-12 category, where sales were $4.07 billion. In the trade category, sales inched ahead 0.4%, to $16.23 billion.

Revenue in the publisher's U.S. group fell 21.8% in the first half of 2020 from the comparable period in 2019, and the U.K.-based Quarto said it expects that the global pandemic will impact its results in the second half of this year.

Revenue in the first six months of 2020 fell 7% at Lagardère Publishing compared to the same period in 2019, helped by a 20% jump in June sales. Hachette Book Group had the best performance in the period, with sales falling 1%.

Following a record first quarter, sales at Educational Development Corp. posted another record in June, with revenue jumping 157% over June 2019.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a 40% decline in fourth quarter revenue at Scholastic and an operating loss of $46 million. The company said it expects a "slower than normal start" to the upcoming school year, and believes it will end the current fiscal year with revenue "slightly below" fiscal 2020.