analyst at the market research group, sakata brett connor second of just released its first quarter snapshot shot for 2024. so how did the us book industry do in the first three months of this year? yep. so in the first quarter of 2024, book sales reached, 195 million units, which is down 3% compared to what we measured in the first quarter of 2023. but i want to put that into context because we're coming off of some of the highest volume years we've ever tracked in bookscan. so our data goes back to 2004. we have 20 years of history and. 2021 was the highest volume year that we've ever tracked in bookscan in 2022 was the second highest. so even though we're seeing seen softer sales when we compare to prior, we're still very strong by historical standards. so i like to measure versus 2019 because 2019 was kind of our last normal year in the book market. this was before the pandemic. this was before book talk. so q1 sales versus q1 in 2019 are actually up 18%. so very healthy and strong market. so who's selling and what genres are selling in 2020 for sure. so the bright spots of grow