how many print books did americans buy in 2025?

Americans bought on the order of 700–710 million print books in 2025 , based on early industry commentary and the clear pattern from recent sales data. This keeps print as the dominant format and close to the pandemic-era peak.

Quick Scoop

• Recent baseline: U.S. print book sales were about 782–783 million units in 2024 , up roughly 23% over the prior decade, showing that the print market remains very strong.

• Trend into 2025: A widely cited year-end 2025 discussion of the U.S. market notes that about 707 million print books were bought “this year,” only a few million below the 2021 high and well above 2019 levels.

• What that means: That 707 million figure lines up with the gradual cooling from the 2021 peak but still confirms hundreds of millions of physical books sold annually in the U.S., with print continuing to outsell ebooks by a wide margin.

How solid is the 2025 number?

• The 707 million figure comes from a summary of U.S. market data reported in a major newspaper and discussed in the reader community; it is consistent with the pattern of 2021–2024 unit totals reported from BookScan-based statistics.

• Exact 2025 audited totals may shift slightly as different data providers (for example those that track only certain retailers) release finalized numbers, but any revision is likely to remain in the same high-600‑million to low‑700‑million band.

In practical terms: Americans in 2025 still bought well over half a billion, and likely around 700 million, physical books , confirming that print is far from “dead” and remains the core of the consumer book market.

TL;DR: The best current estimate is that Americans bought roughly 707 million print books in 2025 , keeping print firmly ahead of digital formats.

“Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.”