Textbook Market Trends: Sales Down but September Shows Promise

Textbook sales are down in 2025, but September shows volume renewal. CGP dominates, while OUP sees declines. Evergreen titles remain crucial. Shift to cheaper textbooks impact vocational sales.

Those even more familiar with the classification will be unsurprised to learn that, with sales of ₤ 15.7 m, CGP dominates– and it has had a relatively great year with both volume and worth sales down 3%, surpassing the rest of the market and with 42 of the Leading 50 titles. The second-biggest author is OUP, with ₤ 3.9 m invested in its titles– a reduction of 12.4% on the initial nine months of 2024, with quantity down a not-too-dissimilar 11.4%.

Textbook Market Overview: Declining Sales

It might not be the sexiest of styles, neither does it supply the greatest volumes– the successful title of the year from the classification, Heinemann’s edition of reading-list staple An Assessor Calls by JB Priestley, just appears in position 229 in the total graph of the year– however it does give consistent and trusted sales, with the very same publications going through tills time after time. 41 of the access in the Institution Textbooks and Study Guides Top 50 for 2025 likewise included in the Top 50 at the very same factor in 2024.

But it is not all bad news. September, worth about 12.1% of the classification’s overall yearly efficiency, has seen a small renewal– in volume terms a minimum of. The group saw sales of 746,538 publications, up 1.6% on the exact same month in 2024– although to balance that out value has dropped also better than the annual average, down 12%.

September Offers Hope: Volume Increase

Up to the end of September, 4.3 million publications have been marketed, down 6.9% contrasted with the very same duration in 2024, while value has actually gotten on even worse, slipping 10.7% to ₤ 32.5 m. That is in plain contrast to the remainder of the TCM where worth is down 0.4% and volume has actually dropped 2.5%. The category saw sales of 746,538 books, up 1.6% on the exact same month in 2024– although to stabilize that out worth has dropped even additionally than the yearly standard, down 12%.

In spite of the predictability of the group, it has seen considerable declines in 2025. As much as the end of September, 4.3 million books have been offered, down 6.9% compared with the same duration in 2024, while worth has fared also worse, slipping 10.7% to ₤ 32.5 m. That remains in plain contrast to the remainder of the TCM where value is down 0.4% and volume has dropped 2.5%. The ₤ 3.9 m missing out on from the Institution Textbooks group covers three quarters of the whole TCM’s worth void up until now in 2025.

That quantity rise– in addition to a value rise of 0.4%– shows that those evergreen titles on top of the graphes are perhaps much more important to examine than some of the more niche titles further down the chart.

Impact of Textbook Price on Sales

A few of the year-on-year difference results from a shift in the classification blend with some even more professional textbooks seeing bigger decreases than their less expensive equivalents– the Vocational sub-category, which has a typical RRP of ₤ 18.24, has seen value sales drop 30%, while the General sub-set, with its ordinary RRP of ₤ 11.37, has experienced the smallest decrease of just 5.8%. Both of those integrated hardly make up ₤ 4m of the group’s overall sales– it is the Literature, Arts & Liberal Arts along with Mathematics, Scientific Research and Technical Sales sub-categories that make up 85.3% of the total income for the sector, and sales right here have gone down 10%, slightly down on the average.

Assist with Homework: Age 7+ Maths Fall, ₤ 3.99, 9781837950737 In spite of CGP’s outstanding total number, its most significant title on the graph– the snappily entitled KS3 Year 7 Mathematics: Targeted Workbook (with solutions)– has to choose fifth place, with Priestley’s An Inspector Calls and OUP’s overview to Macbeth taking their standard one-two slot, with 3rd and fourth area going to Autumn Publishing’s Help with Research: Maths Age 7 and Age 9. Very first released in February 2024, the ₤ 3.99 guides have both seen sales jump by 350% in 2025.

Back to School: Textbook Season

As (yet another) Super Thursday lands in stores backwards and forwards the country, it is simple to be sidetracked by the glossy brand-new publications piling up on tables and appearing in innovative window display screens– but this time of year is a key time for another collection of books: school textbooks and study overviews.

One benefit of such a fixed category– at the very least in regards to the titles that comprise the sales– is that it makes a like-for-like contrast extra robust. For those 41 titles from 2024 that proceed right into 2025’s Top 50, the ASP has gone down from ₤ 6.86 to ₤ 6.64. Quantity has actually risen by 3.7%, recommending that either sellers are discounting a lot more or customers have actually come to be savvier consumers and changed to less costly electrical outlets.