Association of American Publishers

It seems the love affair between hard-copy books and the reading public wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Hence, the tendency to curl up next to the fireplace with a good e-reader is becoming more and more commonplace. Digital books have certainly made their mark on the trade publishing side. According to BookStats 2013, which is co-produced by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, e-books-driven by adult fiction and children's/young adult-have grown 45 percent since 2011 and now constitute 20 percent of the trade market.

2013 has seen a drastic rise in requests to ban books - especially those about race or sexuality - from schools. The Kids' Right to Read Project (KRRP), which is part of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), says that, in the past year, it has investigated 49 book bannings or removals of books from shelves in 29 states, a 53 percent increase from the year before.

Today, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in the Department of Commerce and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released Preliminary Report on the Impact of Arts and Culture on the US Economy, its first study analyzing the arts and cultural sectors' contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment.  

BEIJING - Chinese readers of Ezra F. Vogel's sprawling biographyof China's reformist leader Deng Xiaoping may have missed a few details that appeared in the original English edition. The Chinese version did not mention that Chinese newspapers had been ordered to ignore the Communist implosion across Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. Nor that General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, purged during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, wept when he was placed under house arrest. 

How many of you are wearing a button? Raise your hand. Go ahead - do it at your desk or wherever you're reading this...I'll wait. If you were being honest (and adventurous), nearly all of you would have raised your hands. Everyone wears buttons all the time.

Yet, the button is an extremely old technology. The earliest evidence of buttons made by people dates back to nearly 5,000 years ago. And since then, we've invented all sorts of things to replace it: zippers, velcro, jumpsuits, magnets, snaps and more. But the button has persisted.

WASHINGTON (September 17, 2013)- The Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has announced the call for entries for this year's American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Awards. Now in its 38^th year, the awards recognize books, journals and electronic products that contribute to professional and scholarly publishing, while also maintaining the highest editorial and design standards. The Call for Entries form is available online and submissions will be accepted through November 1, 2013.

In 2011, self-publishing is thought to have drained roughly $100 million in revenue from the traditional trade publishing business - a drop in the bucket for the $14 billion business. In 2012, that number is thought to have doubled. With theincreasing success of self-published authors in hitting best-seller lists, the number should continue to go up. Publishers are not only contending with increased competition for readers' attention, they are finding now more than ever that they need to work to attract new authors and retain established ones.

At roughtype.com, Nicholas Carr continued his examination of the decline in ebook sales growth, a trend that started in 2012 and seems to be continuing this year. According to an Association of American Publishers report, e-book sales in the U.S. trade market for the first quarter of 2013 grew by just 5% over the same period in 2012. Meaning, according to Carr, "the explosive growth of the last few years has basically petered out, according to the APP numbers."

English-language books from US Trade sector publishers continue to flourish worldwide, especially in Europe and Asia and in expanding online international retail sales channels, according to the second annual Association of American Publishers (AAP) Export Sales Report being released today. The report also shows particular worldwide growth in US-published, English-language fiction for Adults and Young Adults.

The report examines US Trade sector (publishers of fiction and non-fiction) 2012 net sales revenue from international markets and includes data from all major consumer publishing houses.

The number of parties has dwindled and there are fewer blockbuster celebrity authors, but the actual business of book publishing looks a little brighter this year.

Book Expo America, which kicks off at the Javits Convention Center today, is designed to bring independent booksellers together so that publishers can hype books they think will be big sellers in the coming months.

Yesterday, the Alfred A. Knopf imprint announced “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the third book in British writer Helen Fielding’s mega-selling series about the travails of a single woman. The first two books became international sensations in the 1990s