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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Books Read It and Weep

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 2:24 PM

c2e3/1238524127-9780689859854.jpg The Association of American Publishers has released their final statement on 2008. Unsurprisingly, 2008 was not a good year for publishing. Publishers sales were down 2.8 percent over the year before.

Some ~~high~~lowlights: Educational books for K-12 fell 4.4%. Mass Market paperbacks fell by 3%. Mail-order book clubs (like the Book-of-the-Month Club) had their sixth straight year of decline. Audio books dropped 21%. Religious books lost 7.6%.

Not every sector saw a drop. Higher education textbooks increased 2.7%. And while hardcover adult and children's books sales fell by about 13%, paperback books for kids increased by 6.4% and sales of paperbacks for adults grew by 3.6%. And the best news of all? Maybe not such good news for parts of the industry:

E-books continue to grow significantly, sales reached $113 million in 2008, up 68.4%

Comments (4) RSS

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Whenever my Bear feels sick, I just give him vitamin C and remind him that Beareoke is on tuesdays.

Posted by Baconcat on March 31, 2009 at 2:33 PM

Most of the publishing industry should be perfectly fine with e-books. You still need authors, editors, designers, and all the support staff.

The PRINTING industry, not so much (and with the shipping department). Do most big publishers contract out their printing? I assume so, but I could be wrong. The only time I see printing information in books is usually in art or photography books.

I seem to remember from my time in bookstores decades ago that hardcover sales are cyclical, and very susceptible to economic pressure, when all of a sudden their expensiveness can leave them exposed. $25 for a novel, or $35 for a brick of history, is getting harder to justify these days.

Posted by Fnarf on March 31, 2009 at 2:40 PM

Am I the only one that is ecstatic that religious book sales were down by 7.6%? Oh, and I really don't care for Thomas Nelson publishing.

Posted by Jon Brock on March 31, 2009 at 4:37 PM

Fnarf, you really think the publishing industry will be fine? Seems to me that electronic delivery has been bad for every segment that has gone online. Remember when there used to be several encyclopedia companies? Now there are arguably no such companies and no such jobs. Playboy took a huge hit because of online porn, and I suspect that other glossy porn magazines have had a difficult time as well. And look what's happening to the newspapers right now. Take away the entry barriers of paper, printing, and postage and you open up the field to lots of new firms, which leads to cost competition, which leads to great deals for consumers but maybe not such great deals for the firms and their employees. I work in the educational part of the business and my outlook is less rosy than yours.

Posted by David from Chicago on April 1, 2009 at 7:27 AM