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Ireland book sales are up

Ireland was second only to Australia in increased book sales in 2009, according to BookScan, the world’s largest market measurement and analysis service.

The service tracks retail sales data in the UK, Ireland, the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Spain and Denmark. Transactional data is collected from 33,500 retailers and distributed throughout the world.

While Ireland saw an increase in volume sales from 13.9 million copies to 14.5 million copies and a rise of 4.4 per cent, the UK saw a fall of half a per cent from 236.8 million copies to 235.6 million.

The larger mature markets of the US and UK both saw declines year-on-year, with retail
and recessionary pressure shrinking the consumer book market in both countries.

Australia and Ireland continue to see good volume growth, while the South African market is fractionally up but effectively flat year-on-year, according to BookScan.

Fiction continues to be healthy in the UK and US with growth of 1.2 per cent in the UK and 2.7 per cent in the
US.

Fiction accounts for a significant portion of the growth in Ireland and Australia, increasing by 7.3 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively., Titles from established authors such as James Patterson and John Grisham dominated sales over the Christmas peak selling period.

In the UK there was a decline of 5 per cent and in the US 4.4 per cent in trade non fiction.
Political, historical and economic categories saw growth across all markets and particularly in Ireland. Traditional Christmas categories biographies performed less well than in previous years.

Children’s and in particular Young Adult Fiction has seen steady growth, driven by the influx of Vampire novels and picture books.

Even without the Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenon the Children’s market is up in most countries, according to BookScan.

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06mar10 353
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