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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