Independent bookstore statistics show a sector with strong recent association growth alongside a much smaller U.S. bookstore footprint than in the late 1990s. In 2023, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) reported 291 bookstore businesses opening and 95 closing, while membership reached 2,593 locations. The Census Bureau’s historical data shows bookstore sales at $10.0 billion in 2017, compared with $16.8 billion in 2007.
Contents
- Independent bookstore growth
- ABA membership and bookstore companies
- Openings, closures, and planned stores
- Events, education, and advocacy
- Sales and the changing bookstore footprint
- What bookstores sell and how they are classified
- Digital commerce and bookstore support
Independent bookstore growth
The ABA reported that membership grew 11% in 2023. Its 2023 Annual Report also recorded more than 200 independent bookstores opening in the United States for the third consecutive year. Those figures describe ABA-reported independent bookstore activity and membership, rather than every bookstore in the country.
ABA supported over 2,800 independent bookstores, according to its About ABA information. In the association’s annual-report figures, membership reached 2,593 member locations in 2023 and 2,844 in 2024. The same report lists 2,496 locations in 2022, 2,433 in 2021, 2,209 in 2020, and 1,929 in 2019.
The recent membership series is useful for understanding the scale of the organized independent bookstore community:
| Year | ABA member locations | ABA bookstore companies |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1,929 | 178 |
| 2020 | 2,209 | 194 |
| 2021 | 2,433 | 198 |
| 2022 | 2,496 | 207 |
| 2023 | 2,593 | 362 |
| 2024 | 2,844 | 441 |
Source: [ABA 2023 Annual Report].
The report lists 178 ABA bookstore companies in 2019, 194 in 2020, 198 in 2021, 207 in 2022, 362 in 2023, and 441 in 2024. These company counts and member-location counts are different measures: one company can be associated with multiple locations. The annual report also lists 1,635 provisional-member locations in 2019, 1,916 in 2020, and 501 in 2024.
ABA membership and bookstore companies
The 2019–2024 figures show two distinct patterns. Member locations rose each year in the listed series, from 1,929 to 2,844. ABA bookstore companies also rose from 178 to 441, with the largest reported year-to-year change occurring between 2022 and 2023. Because the supplied annual-report figures do not explain the classification changes behind each series, the numbers should be read as reported counts, not as a reconstructed census of independent retailers.
The ABA’s 2023 activity also included 192 bookstores planning to open in the next one to two years. That is a forward-looking planning figure, not a confirmed count of future openings. It indicates a pipeline of planned businesses while leaving the timing and completion of those plans uncertain.
Bookshop.org provides another view of the independent bookstore network. Its 2025 Impact Report says the platform supports over 2,500 stores and gives over 80% of its profit margin to independent bookstores. Its 2021 Impact Report listed 1,323 bookstores and 51,023 affiliates, and reported more than $21 million distributed to independent bookstores worldwide, including $18.7 million to U.S. bookstores. These are platform-reported figures from different reporting periods and should not be added to ABA membership totals.
Openings, closures, and planned stores
The ABA 2023 Annual Report recorded 291 bookstore businesses opening in 2023 and 95 closing. It separately described more than 200 independent bookstores opening in the United States for the third consecutive year. The two opening figures use different wording and should remain separate: 291 is a reported count of bookstore businesses, while “more than 200” describes independent bookstores and a consecutive-year pattern.
The same report’s planning figure was 192 bookstores expecting to open within the next one to two years. It is best understood as an indicator of entrepreneurial intent rather than a forecast with a guaranteed outcome. Together, the opening, closing, and planning statistics show active movement in the sector, but they do not establish a national net-change total because the categories are not stated as a complete census and the opening measures differ.
Events, education, and advocacy
Independent bookstore activity also appears in participation and training measures. Independent Bookstore Day 2023 included 1,063 participating stores. Participation was up 21.6% from 874 participants in 2022, and participants came from all 50 states, according to the ABA 2023 Annual Report.
Children’s Institute 2023 had 359 booksellers in attendance, representing 238 stores across the United States. Winter Institute 2023 had over 900 booksellers and more than 1,600 total attendees. The difference between booksellers and total attendees means those figures measure different groups at the same event.
The ABA offered over 100 virtual educational and networking opportunities in 2023. It also visited over 150 independent bookstores that year. These counts describe association programming and outreach, rather than the number of stores operating nationally.
Advocacy was another measurable part of the ABA’s 2023 work. The association advocated against almost three dozen censorship and free-speech bills, won injunctions against two unconstitutional laws restricting First Amendment rights, and launched ABFE across three social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and X.
The ABA reported that over 735 member stores signed up for Let Freedom Read kits in 2023. Banned Books Week 2023 kit signups increased 22.5% from the previous year. The kit-signup figures measure member participation in specific programs, not bookstore sales or customer visits.
Sales and the changing bookstore footprint
The Census Bureau’s [“Don’t Turn the Page on Bookstores”] reports bookstore sales at $12.4 billion in 1997, $15.1 billion in 2002, $16.8 billion in 2007, $11.9 billion in 2012, and $10.0 billion in 2017. These are Economic Census figures for the periods identified by the Census Bureau, not current-year sales estimates.
The same source reports that book stores fell from 12,151 establishments in 1998 to 6,045 in 2019. In 2018, the United States had 6,143 employer bookstores and 8,109 nonemployer bookstores. Employer and nonemployer counts are separate categories, so they should not be treated as interchangeable with ABA member locations or bookstore companies.
The long-term sales and establishment figures can be read together as a historical shift: reported bookstore sales peaked at $16.8 billion in the listed 2007 comparison and were $10.0 billion in 2017, while the number of establishments declined substantially between 1998 and 2019. The data does not identify the causes of every change, so the statistics support description of the trend rather than a single-cause explanation.
In 2017, bookstores accounted for 70.9% of total retail sales in the Census Bureau’s bookstore category, equal to $7.1 billion of the $10.0 billion total. That category also included $412.3 million, or 4.1%, from office and school supplies and packaging materials; $378.0 million, or 3.8%, from toys, games, and hobby supplies; and $305.7 million, or 3.1%, from meals and beverages.
About 90% of bookstores’ total retail book sales in 2017 were trade books and textbooks. The Census Bureau also reported that Nevada had one bookstore for every 110,006 residents in 2017. That state-specific ratio should not be generalized to the national market.
What bookstores sell and how they are classified
The Census Bureau’s 2023 Business Patterns profile lists 5,629 total employer establishments for NAICS 451211, Book stores. The NAICS definition classifies these establishments as primarily engaged in retailing new books.
Classification boundaries matter when interpreting independent bookstore statistics. Book sales through electronic home shopping, mail order, or direct sale are classified under NAICS 454, nonstore retailers, rather than NAICS 451211. Used books are classified under NAICS 453310, used merchandise stores, rather than 451211. Therefore, a single bookstore-related question can produce different totals depending on whether it covers physical new-book stores, nonstore retail, or used merchandise businesses.
The Census Bureau’s 2017 sales mix reinforces that bookstores are not limited to book revenue. The reported category included retail sales of books as well as supplies, toys and games, and meals and beverages. The separate product shares—4.1% for office and school supplies and packaging materials, 3.8% for toys, games, and hobby supplies, and 3.1% for meals and beverages—quantify several non-book components.
Digital commerce and bookstore support
IndieCommerce traffic was 43% higher in 2023 than in 2019, according to the ABA 2023 Annual Report. At the same time, traffic declined 13% versus 2022. The IndieCommerce sales conversion rate was 21% higher in 2023 than in 2019. These are indexed comparisons, not disclosed traffic totals or conversion percentages.
The ABA approved an additional $1.1 million in funding for IndieCommerce 2.0 in May 2024. Bookshop generated $5.1 million for bookstores in 2023, according to the same annual report. The reported funding approval and generated amount describe different initiatives and should not be combined as one financial total.
Bookshop.org’s support information says bookstore affiliates receive a 30% commission on marketplace sales, while non-bookstore affiliates receive 10%. Bookstore-affiliate profit-pool distributions occur twice per year, in July and January. Bookstore affiliates must have one of four ABA membership types: Pop-up, Mobile, Provisional, or Storefront.
For ebooks, Bookshop.org says affiliated bookstores earn 30% of the ebook list price and that an additional 10% of ebook revenue goes into a shared profit pool for independent bookstores. These commission and profit-pool percentages describe Bookshop.org’s stated program terms, not the profitability of every independent bookstore or the entire bookstore market.