Friday, March 30, 2012

Scholastic Adds 12.5 Million Units of Hunger Games In 2012


PublishersLunch

Scholastic says that the three Hunger Games titles have over 36.5 million units in print in the US: over 17.5 million copies of THE HUNGER GAMES; 10 million copies of CATCHING FIRE; and 9 million copies of Mockingjay. In January the publisher said they had 24 million units in print, so they have shipped and/or sold 12.5 million units so far in 2012.
That squares roughly with the figures in Scholastic's recent quarterly earnings report on March 15. Trade book sales had jumped from $43.5 million up to $112 million, largely on the strength of Hunger Games sales. That $68.5 million increase equals roughly 9 million to 10 million Hunger Games units (the bestselling ebooks carry digital list prices that are close to the hardcover lists prices, even for the books that are already in paperback).
Just as Hunger Games boosted Scholastic's results, the books were apparently big enough to drive a meaningful part of the gains showed in the new January AAP StatShot figures we reported yesterday.
In rough terms, about 4 million units of Hunger Games in July could have comprised $30 million. That begs a significant question: was the $18.7 million gain in children's ebooks the emergence of a real digital kids' market--or was it 2 million or so units of Hunger Games (at $15 million) plus some other natural growth?
For printed children's books, hardcovers and paperbacks together gained almost $38 million over a year ago--so their Hunger Games could have accounted for 40 percent of more of the gain, but clearly their was other market improvement as well.

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