Highlights from ABACUS for SIBA
The American Booksellers Association has released the 2025 ABACUS report, and SIBA received a report specifically for our region. The report highlights issues for SIBA stores and gives interesting information about how stores in the region operate.
SIBA once again had the highest percentage of ABACUS responses among all regiona ls. 100% of SIBA ABACUS participants were brick-and-mortar stores. 51.6% are urban; 37.5% suburban; and 10.9% rural.
Most SIBA stores that responded are in an area with a population of 100K-500K (34.4%), followed by 20K-50K population (18.8%).
Here are some insights from the report.
On Sales & Profitability
SIBA stores bring in lower-than-average sales and profits on all fronts, including lower average sales, gross margin, net operating profits, net income, and average transaction value. Our region also has lower sales growth versus the prior year and higher cost of goods sold for books.
SIBA stores are larger than average but have lower sales and profit margins per selling square foot. They also carry less books, and books are a higher percentage of sales than average, with non-book sales being lower.
On Staff
SIBA stores overall carry less staff and pay their staff and owners less than average, with a larger living wage gap. Employee turnover is higher, and net sales and gross margin is less per full-time equivalent employee.
On Store Operations
SIBA stores do more in online sales than average, with 81% of participating SIBA stores indicating that they sell online. Of that 81%, online sales are 7% of their total sales on average. SIBA also has a higher percentage of stores using IndieCommerce and “Other” e-commerce systems.
Our region has higher than average rent and occupancy expenses, paying on average 8% of revenue to rent and 10% of revenue to overall occupancy.
SIBA stores carry 11,296 unique titles on average, which is higher than the overall 10,716 store average, and 21,948 total quantity of books, which is right around the general average.
A slim majority of SIBA stores use Batch (52.4%), and most stores do not sell e-books (84.2% do not), but the majority do sell audiobooks (82.8%).
SIBA stores also bring in more sales from events than the average store.