Religious books saw a slight decrease of 0.5% in sales in 2010 compared to the previous 12 months, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

The category had $585.4 million in total revenues—noted the report released earlier this week, which provided annual total book sales. Religious books had seen a 9% and 7.6% drop in sales in 2009 and 2008, respectively. For December, sales for religious books decreased 11.8% to $49.9 million after the category saw a 5.4% increase to $51.1 million in November.

The religion sales drop for 2010 was topped by the Children's/Young Adult Paperback category, which fell 5.7% to $546.6 million, while sales in the Hardcover category for the same age fell 9.5% to $694.3 million.

Physical audiobooks' sales declined 6.3% to $137.3 million, while downloaded audiobooks' sales rose 38.8% to $81.9 million.

Mass-market decreased 6.3% to $673.5 million, while the sales for the Adult Hardcover category dropped 5.1% to $1.57 billion and Adult Paperback sales decreased 2% to $1.38 billion.

The biggest growth occurred in e-book sales, which shot up 164.4% to $441.3 million. E-book sales represented 8.32% of the overall trade book market in 2010—up from 3.20% in 2009, AAP said.

Overall, AAP estimates that publishers had net sales of $11.6 billion in 2010—representing a 3.6% increase from $11.2 billion in 2009.

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