Textbook Publishing

K-12 Course Material Sales Drop by $182M YTD

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 09/14/20

Sales of course materials for K-12 plummeted by $182 million between June 2019 and July 2020. That's a 25 percent drop, according to the Association of American Publishers. Sales for July 2020 in that segment totaled $549.3 million.

Total sales in the K-12 category of publishing totaled $1.458 billion for the seven-month period of January 2020 through July 2020, down from $2.035 billion over the same period last year, a decline of 28 percent.

Overall education revenues for K-12, higher ed, professional books and universities presses were down 18.7 percent year-to-date, totaling $2.84 billion.

The APP generated the statistics from publisher net revenue, including sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, etc. The data covered revenue information from 1,360 publishers.