During March, book sales fell 17% to $388.4 million as reported by 84 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. For the year to date, book sales are down 6.8% to $1.625 billion.

The numbers are in line with the sales drops reported recently by some of the publicly traded publishers but are bigger falls than the Census Bureau reported for bookstores (bookstore sales were estimated to have fallen 1.3% to $999 million in March and are estimated to be down 4.1% to $4.242 billion for the year to date).

The strongest categories were e-books, which more than doubled in sales, children's hardcovers (shout out to Stephenie Meyer!) and the college market.

Among AAP categories:

• E-books rose 110.4% to $10 million.
• Higher education rose 20.2% to $50.3 million.
• Children's/YA hardcover rose 6.7% to $51.7 million.

• Adult mass market dipped 4.3% to $65.4 million.
• University press hardcover slipped 7.8% to $5.1 million.
• Religious books dropped 11.4% to $44.1 million.
• Children's/YA paperback fell 14.1% to $44.3 million.
• Professional and scholarly dropped 17.1% to $37.8 million.
• Adult hardcover fell 19.4% to $80 million.
• University press paperback fell 20.7% to $2.8 million.
• Adult paperback dropped 35.8% to $89.1 million.
• Audiobooks dropped 43.3% to $7.6 million.