Nielsen BookScan

Penguin has announced UK sales of 50,000 paperbacks of Sylvia Day's "Bared to You," published last week (19th July), with almost 500,000 copies in print. A further 50,000 copies have been sold in e-book form, the publisher said. Rachel Russell, W H Smith business unit director, called the sales "astounding", pointing out they exceeded those of E L James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" in its first week of publication, before it became a record-breaking phenomenon..

Nine of the country's leading independent publishers have taken a bold step, and deserve public recognition for their action. On June 25, they submitted a cogent, twenty-page comment to the court objecting to the Department of Justice's settlement with the three publishers on the grounds that it would "adversely impact competition -- harming independent publishers, authors, booksellers and consumers -- and should be rejected." The case itself would still go forward, unless it is dismissed by the judge or is settled in some way that remains to be devised.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - It could all change quickly, but independent booksellers again have good news to report as the publishing industry prepares for its annual national convention, BookExpo America. Core membership of the American Booksellers Association rose by 55 over the past year, from 1,512 to 1,567. It's the third straight increase for the independents' trade organization after years of double digit and triple digit declines brought on by superstore chains and online sellers such as Amazon.com. The independents have stabilized even as the economy suffers and the market shifts dramatically from physical stores to digital purchases.

“Total unit sales of print books sold through the outlets whose sales are captured by Nielsen BookScan dropped 10.2% in the six month period ended July 3, 2011." This is an ongoing trend that will continue, according to most publishing experts.

This year's US and UK non-fiction bestseller charts tell a fascinating story - and UK readers don't emerge well from the comparison. The bestselling ebook of the year in the UK? Not James Patterson, not Lee Child, not even Stieg Larsson. No: the Bookseller reports that Benjamin Daniels's Confessions of a GP, "a witty insight into the life of a family doctor", is our ebook number one for 2011.

Faber is to publish a "definitive" biography of entertainment mogul Simon Cowell by journalist Tom Bower, whose biography of Bernie Ecclestone came out with the publisher earlier this year. Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell will be out in May 2012, and is "the result of hundreds of hours of unprecedented access to Cowell, plus direct contributions from his many supporters and rivals", Faber said. UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by publisher Stephen Page from Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, with Angus Cargill set to edit. The book will be published simultaneously in the US by

 The first official sales charts including e-book sales data have been published in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, with Nielsen BookScan now supplying e-book sales reports to the US paper. Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (Henry Holt & Co) was number one across all three non-fiction charts—hardcover, e-book and combined—with The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks taking the hardcover and combined fiction top spots, losing out to Bonnie by Iris Johansen (St Martin's Press) in the e-book only chart.

Three major publishers said on Wednesday that they would allow their authors to access book sales data directly online, a move that appeared to challenge Amazon and its continued efforts to woo authors.

Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers. Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.

Children’s books may be about finding the kid in all of us, but everyone in the children’s publishing business agrees that they have to grow up when it comes to taking advantage of profitable opportunities. The Internet is clearly not going away, yet with the need to protect children from cyberspace predators, publishers have to go through parents to get through to their young audiences. Once you reach them, however, it can’t hurt to be as multidimensional as possible. Jason Wells, publicity and marketing director for New York-based Harry N. Abrams Inc., says kids are looking for books that are not just self-contained