The press is full of the challenging market times we face, whether buying milk, manufacturing cars or publishing books. Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown says encouragingly today, times have been tougher in publishing.
"First, we must remember the advice of the late Douglas Adams and Don't Panic. The book industry has been through worse times than this, people will always read books, books will still be published, and until that changes most of us will still be here."
The American Association of Publishers reported significant year to date increase and decreases in many sales in August. But the range of change was broad.
Winners:
E-books sales jumped up by a whopping 52 percent for the year.
Adult Paperback sales increased by 9.5 percent for the year.
The Children’s/YA Paperback saw an increase of 14.1 percent for the year.
Losers:
The Children’s/YA Hardcover sales for year-to-date dropped by 35.5 percent.
Audio Book sales were down by 26.8 percent.
Religious Books saw a decrease of 7.7 percent for the year.
More recently HarperCollins UK has put a hold on all recruitment until the start of next year "in response to the current economic climate". The decision by HarperCollins UK follows a tough quarter for the worldwide business, with profits down some $33m.
Without wanting to be too pessimistic, we're not out of the woods yet. In fact, we've hardly entered them yet at all. The reality is that the consumer economic climate has only just started to cool and has not yet filtered through its full impact to publishing. Publishers at Frankfurt confirmed to me, that "prices have gone up. Fact." And in an economic climate in which people have less cash in their pockets, any price increase can have a negative affect on sales.
I believe next year will see further increases in book costs as printing costs rise. Q4 has seen an increase in Russian wood export tax and 2008 has seen a succession of printing house closures across China as legislation (both environmental and anti-piracy) has put many companies with lower standards out of business. Penguin UK sourced 60% of their production from China in 2007. At the end of 2007, prices were already increasing and causing consternation at the Beijing Book Fair.
Further, the Chinese printers are looking to western publishers who run on large economies of scale. Matthew S. Chan summed up his feeling from Book Expo America earlier this year, "Chinese printers, are out of touch of the undercurrents going on in the publishing industry... they were happy to cater to American companies that wanted to commit to print runs of 3,000 and more. Many of the Chinese companies wanted print runs of 5,000 or more. However, what they do not yet understand is that “long tail” and the boom of small, independent publishers will continue to erode at the core business of the “big best-seller” that large publishing houses love so much."
China is the largest global importer of Russian wood. Higher import prices will inevitably be passed onto the customers, the publishers. If demand is also met by fewer suppliers, it can only exacerbate the pressure on price. And this will coincide with a publishing market with less buying power looking for small print runs, which will be offered at higher costs. Typically, this reduced demand would result in more closures, and a cyclical process will continue until supply, price and demand get back in balance. This may take some time. Of course there are many printing industries around the world, in Europe and the US too, but if you follow the Paper Index Times, similar issues concern printing companies from Canada to Cambodia.
Quoting Edward Nawotka at Beyond Hall 8 Barnes & Noble CEO Len Riggio wrote an email to his booksellers telling them to brace “for a terrible holiday season, and expect the trend to continue well into 2009, and perhaps beyond.” This is the same Barnes & Noble who has recently told distributors it will not be paying for two months due to anticipated excessive returns.
This expectation seems to be true for all sectors, Children's and adult alike.
So I'm stockpiling. I've ordered my Book Club list for the next nine months, Christmas gifts and my current 'like-to-haves'. I've bought some online and some from my local store. The only problem is now, where will I store them? I'll share the list tomorrow. 19, I just counted, yikes.
