The Postal Service announced that it received favorable review from the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), approving the Postal Service’s plan to implement USPS Ground Advantage on July 9, 2023. USPS Ground Advantage is the Postal Service’s enhanced ground solution. It provides a simple, reliable, and more affordable way to ship packages in two-to-five business days across the continental United States. Pricing for USPS Ground Advantage will reflect a decrease of 1.4 percent relative to predecessor USPS shipping products, specifically retail prices will be 3.2 percent lower and commercial published prices will be 0.7 percent lower in comparison.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its StatShot report for August 2022 reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Higher Education Course Materials, and Professional Publishing. The report does not include PreK-12 revenue due to delays in data collection but will be updated as soon as that data becomes available. Total revenues across all categories, excluding PreK-12, for August 2022 were down 9.0% as compared to August 2021, coming in at $1.4 billion. Year-to-date revenues were down 5.0%, at $7.9 billion for the first eight months of the year. Trade (Consumer Books) sales were down 10.5% in August, coming in at $744.3 million.

Readers purchased 825 million copies of print books in the U.S. in 2021—the best-selling year for print books, NPD Bookscan says, since it began tracking data in 2004—and analysts believe young people posting about books on social media played a serious role in those big numbers. The U.S. print book market was up 9% compared to 2020, according to NPD Bookscan, finishing 67 million copies ahead of 2020, and selling 125 million more copies than in 2019. Kristen McLean, executive director and industry analyst at NPD Bookscan, said social media—particularly TikTok users who post about books, known collectively as BookTok—has “definitely been a factor” in surging book sales, along with the pandemic in general, with many of the sales gains coming in Q1 and Q2 before the Covid-19 vaccines were widely available.