BookStats 2012 collects data from 1,977 book publishers in four sectors (trade/consumer, school/K-12, higher ed, and professional/scholarly). Some top-level findings:

• Ebooks made up 15 percent of trade publishers’ net sales revenues, or $2.074 billion, in 2011, compared to just 6 percent ($869 million) in 2010. Ebooks also account for 15.5 percent of trade publishers’ unit sales, with 388 million units sold — up from 5 percent (125 million units sold) in 2010. (Note: “Ebooks” here is defined as “all primary e-formats: ebooks, enhanced ebooks and paid mobile apps.”)

• Trade book sales are relatively flat. Trade publishers pulled in a total of $13.97 billion in revenues in 2011, compared to $13.90 in 2010 — a 0.5 percent increase.
• The total U.S. book market decreased slightly. Revenues from all book publishers were $27.2 billion in 2011, compared to $27.9 billion in 2010.
• Publishers are selling more books, though. While revenues were down slightly, unit sales were up 3.4 percent, to 2.77 billion books sold in 2011. (One reason for that could be more cheap ebooks.)
• Children’s/young adult books saw the highest growth of any category. Sales increased 12 percent in 2011, to $2.78 billion. The growth was driven largely by popular YA series like “The Hunger Games.”
• Bricks-and-mortar bookstores are still publishers’ primary sales channel. Physical bookstores accounted for 31.5 percent of publishers’ total net dollar sales in 2011 — but that was down 12.6 percent from 2010.

• Publishers’ direct-to-consumer sales nearly doubled, with revenue from direct sales hitting $1.1 billion in 2011 — up from $702 million in 2010, an increase of 58 percent. The AAP tells me that most of those direct sales were concentrated in the trade and higher education sectors.

Notes: BookStats is published jointly by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group. (In the past, the groups conducted separate annual surveys.) The report is the most comprehensive look at the U.S. book publishing industry to date, incorporating net sales revenue and unit data reported 1,977 U.S. publishers. The report tracks sales and units by format (physical, digital, bundles); category; and channel. The full BookStats 2012 report is available for purchase here.

The charts illustrating this post were created by me, not by BookStats.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Borys Shevchuk

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That data point comes on the heels of an announcement earlier on Thursday that YouTube is now available in IsiZulu and Afrikaans, two languages spoken in South Africa. The site is now available in 51 languages total, with YouTube offering a localized experience including a top-level domain and country-specific video recommendations in 35 countries around the world.

YouTube has previously said that it clocks more than three billion video views every day. This means that at least 1.8 billion of those views come from people whose primary language is not English, no matter whether they reside inside the U.S. or not.

This kind of diversity represents a huge opportunity for YouTube: Premium content services like Netflix and Hulu are subject to contractual restrictions that turn international expansions into a slow-moving process. YouTube, on the other hand, already has a global audience, and it has begun to monetize a significant part of it. A localized version of YouTube’s partner program is now available in 25 countries.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Horia Varlan

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A user survey conducted by TV Guide has 15 percent of respondents saying they watch more than six hours of online video a week. Last year, that number was still at four percent. Sixty-two percent of all respondents said they watch more online video than just a year ago.

Of course, TV Guide’s user survey is somewhat self-selective, which is why it’s interesting that a study by advertising specialist Burst Media has even more impressive numbers: The Burst Media Online Insights survey (PDF) has the number of people who tune in online for more than six hours a week at close to 30 percent. Almost three percent even profess watching more than 24 hours of online video per week!

TV Guide’s survey, which will be presented at the paidContent Entertainment conference in Los Angeles Thursday, also shows that a lot of that growth can be attributed to professional content. Fifty-five percent of the respondents said they tune in to their favorite shows online. That’s also echoed by the Burst Media survey, albeit with slightly weaker numbers. Burst’s survey has 39.1 percent of Internet users watching TV content online, with 49.7 percent watching user-generated content.

And finally, two-screen activity continues to grow as well. Burst Media says a third of online viewers now “often” use the Internet while watching TV.

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Also interesting is the percentage of users who told researchers that they stopped by such a site yesterday, which grew to 28 percent. In other words, more than a quarter of us go to YouTube and its competitors on any given day.

A few other tidbits worth noting: Parents frequent video sites more than the general public, with 81 percent of parents saying that they use these kinds of sites, but only 61 percent of non-parents admit to it. There’s also some racial difference in how viewers tune into online video: Around 69 percent of the white folks surveyed visit YouTube & Co., compared to 79 percent of all the people of color.

Of course, the popularity of video sharing sites isn’t limited to the U.S.: Earlier today, a report from Allot Communications revealed that close to a quarter of all mobile bandwidth consumed worldwide can be traced back to YouTube.

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According to Wozniak, it has always been Steve Jobs’ dream to create a computer that was easy enough for anyone to pick up and use, but “but it was just hard to get there, because we had to go through a lot of steps where you connected to things.” Anyone who’s had the pleasure of trying to set up a wireless network even just five to ten years ago can probably attest to this. If you remember connecting to the web in its earliest days, then you probably don’t need any more convincing.

Anecdotally, the iPad is the first computing device my mother has ever enjoyed being able to use. It’s also the only computer my girlfriend needs; she’s completely abandoned her aging Windows laptop (I actually haven’t even physically seen it in around six months) in favor of my first-gen iPad. And it’s the only computing device my luddite friend living in the wilderness of northern Ontario has ever asked me about with genuine curiosity. And of course, there’s the now famous story of the 100 year-old woman who was thrilled with her first computer purchase: a first-generation iPad:

Yet, many of the numbers detailing the average iPad user seem to go against such anecdotal findings. A November 2010 survey performed by SAI found that just 28.9 percent of respondents indicated that the iPad was their primary computing device. It’s an impressive number, but it still suggests that for the large majority, an iPad is a secondary device. Then there’s a December 2010 study performed by the Reynolds Journalism Institute that found that the average iPad owner is a college-educated 48-year old man, earning more than $100,000 per year. That’s hardly a picture of normalcy in the U.S., where 75 percent of the population earn less than $50,000 a year, and women make up a little more than half the total population, according to the latest census data.

Of course, the iPad has only existed for a little over a year. Global adoption, especially among demographics that are traditionally slow-moving when it comes to new tech uptake, will take time, so it makes sense that early iPad owner statistics would be more indicative of what constitutes an early adopter than what best represents the target market of the iPad itself.

Wozniak may be over-generalizing when he says that the “iPad is for the normal people of this world,” but it still represents the best attempt we’ve yet seen to make computing easy enough for users who don’t have extensive computer-using experience. And the price of entry for ownership is on the low side not only for tablets, but also for computing devices in general. I suspect that the picture of the average iPad user depicted above won’t be the same one we see in two or three years, and that Woz’s statement will make even more sense as Apple continues to refine the iOS experience with the general computer user in mind.

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The growth is driven in part by a usage shift for people aged 31 to 44, who for the first time, now spend more time online (17 hours) per week than in front of the TV (14 hours). People aged 45 to 54 also embrace the Internet much more than before, now spending 14 hours in front of the web browser as well as the TV.

These trends also have a direct impact on online video. 33 percent of consumers in the U.S. and Canada now stream video online, compared to 16 percent three years ago. However, the lust for video isn’t permeating to non-PC devices just yet: Only eight percent of all mobile consumers watch TV or video on their handset.

Forrester’s data is based on voluntary surveys of individual consumers in the U.S. as well as in Canada, which explains why there are discrepancies when compared to data coming from Nielsen. The latter estimates that U.S. households watch about five hours of TV a day.

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That means U.S. Internet users who frequent video sites now watch an average of 30 minutes of online video a day. As a frame of reference, recent Nielsen data shows U.S. households watch about five hours of TV a day.

Part of the growth in online video has to do with individual sites becoming stickier. One good example for this trend is YouTube, which attracted a total of 146 million viewers in October when combined with the other Google video properties. comScore recorded more than two billion viewing sessions for Google’s video sites that month. Do the math, and you’ll see that the average YouTube viewer now watches videos for some 19.7 minutes before leaving the site.

YouTube is trying to extend the length of these sessions even further by offering its users a more immersive experience. The site recently launched its big screen-optimized Leanback user interface to serve videos as a continuous stream, and YouTube’s Hunter Walk told us at NewTeeVee Live last week that the goal is to encourage “low-intent viewing” by serving a personalized channel of videos as opposed to the thousands of channels on cable TV.

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Mobile traffic to the video site grew 32 percent on post-match mornings. This significantly contributed to a rise in mobile data consumption, which was up 16 percent during that time of the day.

Data consumption was up 24 percent while matches were going on. However, most mobile users didn’t try to watch video of complete games on their handsets, but instead used them to catch up on stats and real-time reports from the games. Web browsing was up 35 percent, but video streaming bandwidth only increased by 11 percent. And YouTube traffic actually dipped 14 percent during matches broadcast after work hours, with people busy following them on the big screen.

Here’s a snapshot of two particular matches that were broadcast during different times of the day (all times are GMT+2):

I know what you’re thinking: Weren’t all the World Cup games during morning, or at least the daytime hours? They were in the U.S., but they don’t call this the World Cup for nothing. Allot based its findings on data from mobile networks around the world, which were analyzed during 42 matches.

For more insight into mobile and PC-based online video consumption during the World Cup, please also check our article World Cup Stats: The Net’s Biggest Sporting Event.

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The shift, however, comes with hefty implications: a huge growth in mobile data traffic and the all-but-certain death of flat-rate mobile broadband pricing, as carriers follow AT&T’s lead in pricing mobile broadband.

This year, for the first time, Pew asked mobile users about emerging Internet activities like sending photos and videos, posting and watching them online. Note these categories for the next usage growth spurt. Today, 54 percent of U.S. cellphone owners have used their mobile device to send someone a photo or video, 20 percent to watch a video, and 15 percent to post a photo or video online.

Those are significant numbers; as a reference, the total portion of U.S. cell phone owners who use Internet, email *or* instant messaging is 40 percent. More report sending photos and videos from their phones than going online. And of course, this is more bad news for Cisco’s Flip, with its soon-to-be-outdated focus on single-function video cameras.

For signs that mobile video consumption is already climbing, look no further than YouTube, which announced today it has crossed 100 million mobile video plays per day. This makes its mobile video volume about the same as its web video volume at the time it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006. YouTube’s mobile video views grew 160 percent in 2009. And YouTube has just majorly revved its mobile site for optimized playback and better browsing. There’s no doubt that will only add to usage.

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The game also caused some significant activity on Twitter, with Trendrr tracking about 120,000 tweets per hour for the keyword USA and 90,000 tweets per hour for the keyword Ghana.

That’s a lot of tweets, but not as much as caused by the 91st minute miracle in the game against Slovenia, which caused some 175,000 tweets per hour. The number of tweets also wasn’t high enough to cause any significant problems for Twitter, which saw its service struggle earlier this month under the flood of World Cup-related activity.

Akamai has also seen more traffic before, measuring record-breaking 421,000 hits per second during the game between South Africa and Uruguay last week. Much of this can likely be explained by the fact that users tune in online when they’re at work, but prefer the big screen when they’re at home on the weekend. In fact, Nielsen said today that the U.S. vs. Ghana game drew the biggest U.S. soccer audience ever to TV broadcasts.

And World Cup online traffic hasn’t been down across the board: Univision did see some record traffic this Sunday for its Univisionfutbol.com site, delivering more than 12.4 million page views and up to 72,000 simultaneous streams on Sunday due to the matchup between Argentinia and Mexico.

However, with both the U.S. and Mexico out, one has to wonder if this will be it, in terms of online traffic records for the World Cup, at least for the U.S.-based audience? It’s only natural that tournaments see their audience gradually erode as people’s favorite teams are sent home. CBS shared some statistics about the online audience of March Madness on Demand last week that showed some of the biggest crowds tuning in early on, with numbers gradually declining towards the end.

The World Cup is admittedly somewhat of a different beast, so we will have to wait and see whether other countries will be able to capture the world’s imagination, in which case the coming rounds could deliver even more traffic records.

Picture of U.K. soccer fan courtesy of Flickr user ggjsmith.

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