Across the board, a bad book year

Not even Harry Potter could prevent a big drop in book sales in 2003.

With a struggling economy and competition for time from other media, 23 million fewer books were sold last year than in 2002, according to a report issued this week by the Book Industry Study Group, a not-for-profit research organization.

Sales fell to 2.222 billion books, down from 2.245 billion in 2002. The decline was in both hardcovers and paperbacks, in children’s books and general trade releases. Even sales of religious titles, often cited as a growing part of the publishing industry, were flat.