Online Retail Now Accounts for Nearly Half All U.S. Book Sales

dbw reporting:
Online book retail, including ebooks, accounted for 44% of all spending by consumers on books in the U.S. in 2012, according to a new report from Bowker.
This is up from 39% in 2011, which was the first year when online retail eclipsed physical retail as the No. 1 place U.S. consumers buy books.
The new data also revealed that Amazon increased its lead over other outlets in online book retail in 2012, with ebook sales from Barnes & Noble, the second-leading online outlet, declining as a proportion of overall sales even as ebooks continue to gain popularity nationwide. This bit of data dovetails with marketplace chatter about Barnes & Noble’s declining position among ebook buyers and as a source of revenue for some publishers.
Ebook spending grew in 2012 to an 11% share of the total versus 7% in 2011. While about a quarter of Americans say they read ebooks and many “power buyers” buy huge volumes of them, ebooks typically cost much less than print books, which explains the discrepancy between the number of Americans who read ebooks and the amount spent on them.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/online-retail-now-accounts-for-nearly-half-all-u-s-book-sales/?et_mid=631491&rid=233619411

5 Ways to Fix Book Publishing

The Daily Beast reporting:

This model of literary production is doomed. The idea that there should be centralized, massively consolidated, bureaucratic organizations known as the major trade houses, with multiple layers of editors, vast publicity departments, and books fed to them by an entity known as literary agents, only to take repeated losses and rely on a few stars to help them break even, is bound for extinction.

Is the current publishing model salvageable? Or is it time to scrap everything and start over? If book publishing is to survive, something drastic will have to occur. The technology already exists to make publishing a democratic venture, driven from the bottom up rather than the other way around.

The discussion of the crisis of publishing persists mostly at a pedestrian level. The alternatives offered are minor fixes, taking existing production, distribution, and consumption methodologies for granted. We don’t need to figure out how to maximize sales with the latest e-reader. We need to reconceive the concepts of writing, editing, and reading, and subject every institutional component to radical critique. It isn’t a question of which reading device is best, or how publishers will make up for the loss of Borders, or how they can squeeze more money out of the present distribution model.

The crisis of publishing is really the crisis of writing and reading. The publishing industry today generally obstructs the free flow of energies between readers and writers. It is a broker for celebrity authors, taking the entire literary culture on a downward slope because the definition of “commercial” is constantly being dumbed down. Hence, cookie-cutter books, formulaic sensations, highly publicized advances, the anachronistic book tour, and literary stars with all the trappings of their brethren in the movie and fashion industries. Rather than pushing more of the product that publishers already offer, the nature of the product itself must change. Yes, there is a crisis in publishing, but this is good because it means that the public isn’t buying the hype....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/12/5-ways-to-fix-book-publishing.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet 

U.K. Publishers Hit Book Sales Record for 2012 Amid Digital Growth

LONDON - British publishers brought in their highest-ever annual sales in 2012, with stronger sales for digital formats outweighing a slight decline in printed books.
Overall, spending on printed and digital books rose 4 percent to more than $5.1 billion (£3.3 billion) last year, the Publishers Association said late in the week.
Printed books saw a 1 percent sales drop to $4.5 billion (£2.9 billion), but digital sales jumped 66 percent to $640 million (£411 million).
The Publishers Association didn't mention any specific book titles as drivers of growth, but Nielsen Bookscan previously said that EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy topped the British chart of retail book sales.
Other big sellers of 2012 included Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series and JK Rowling's first non-Harry Potter novel, The Casual Vacancy.
Digital formats, including e-books, audiobooks and online book subscriptions, accounted for 12 percent of the total value of sales in 2012, up from 8 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2010.
Sales of consumer e-books, which are in the field of mainstream fiction and non-fiction, were up 134 percent to $336 million (£216 million).
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/uk-publishers-hit-book-sales-451569

Penguin and Random House Combine to Form World’s Largest Book Publisher

dbw reporting:
Pearson and Bertelsmann plan to combine their Penguin and Random House trade publishing businesses to form the world’s largest book publisher. The deal will be subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the second half of 2013. The combined firm will be called Penguin Random House, the companies announced in separate statements this morning.
Penguin Random House will be led by Markus Dohle and John Makinson. Dohle, the current Random House chairman and CEO, will be the CEO of Penguin Random House. Makinson, the current Penguin chairman and CEO, will be chairman of the board. Bertelsmann will own 53% of Penguin Random House and Pearson will own 47%. The two companies together would have about 9,000 employees. The agreement wouldn’t include certain assets, like Random House’s Germany-based trade publishing unit; and Pearson would retain the right to use the Penguin name and logo in its education business, according to the New York Times.
Related: What the New Penguin Random House Logo Might Look Like | What the Merger Means
In the statements, Bertelsmann chairman & CEO Thomas Rabe spoke of the new firm’s size and scope...
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/penguin-and-random-house-combine-to-form-worlds-largest-book-publisher/?et_mid=587142&rid=233619411

How the E-Book Ruling Will Affect the Way You Read

care2 reporting: A long-running controversy has shaken the book industry, and it could affect the way you buy, access and read the books you love. On Friday, three major book publishers agreed to pay $69 million in a settlement of the highly-publicized lawsuit alleging that five of the “big six” publishers colluded with Apple to fix e-book prices, and possibly changed the future of book publishing forever.. 

What does the settlement mean for you?

1. It hurts traditional book publishers by taking away their control to price their own books in the marketplace. Take a look at the kind of books these publishers develop, market and sell. If you have ever read and loved one of these books, then the DOJ settlement is one to keep an eye on.
2. It hurts brick-and-mortar bookstores by allowing competitors such as Amazon to price books below cost. Most physical bookstores are unable to give such steep discounts because they have to pay rent and employees. But many consumers are looking for the best bargain and will go for Amazon every time.
3. It hurts our communities by making it more difficult for local shops to sell books. When the only way to buy a book is to order it on the internet, Amazon will have won. Do you really want to live in a world with no bookstores to browse?
4. It hurts authors by allowing their books to be sold at deep discounts and putting financial strain on their publishers. A number of authors, including Richard Russo and Ann Patchett, have spoken out against the DOJ lawsuit and its potentially harmful consequences for the book industry.
5. It hurts each individual reader by reducing the diversity of the reading market. Publishers develop a variety of authors and books to appeal to virtually every taste on the planet.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-doj-e-book-ruling-will-affect-the-way-you-read.html#ixzz25aBLFEXl

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-doj-e-book-ruling-will-affect-the-way-you-read.html#ixzz25aBEN7xK

 

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-doj-e-book-ruling-will-affect-the-way-you-read.html#ixzz25aAmfVPQ

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/how-the-doj-e-book-ruling-will-affect-the-way-you-read.html#ixzz25aAbQcfj

The Publishing Industry Is Compared To A Dead Norwegian Blue Parrot

Pressbooks reporting: In discussing contemporary publishing, there’s really only one mystery. Why does a collection of sophisticated, intellectually curious adults, many of them with substantial financial resources at their disposal, perpetuate a system that has failed? To quote John Cleese whilst attempting to return his deceased Norwegian Blue, publishing is “stone-dead,” an ex-parrot nailed to its perch, as it were, by sporadic bestseller and backlist sales. It hinges on guesswork and cronyism, on antiquated, environmentally and fiscally disastrous supply and production systems. The persistence of this system would be understandable if there were no alternative. But there is, and it’s not even based on proprietary technology. It’s primarily a matter of attitude, of being willing to try a new direction.
Not too long ago, I was reading about the “Red Queen Theory of Evolution.” A concept first put forth by the American evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen in the 1970s, it was named after the bloody-minded chess piece in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. In the relevant passage, the Red Queen says to Alice, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” Van Valen applied this metaphor to evolution, suggesting that species are in a constant race for survival and continually must evolve new ways of defending themselves throughout time. It seems to me this metaphor is exactly what we need to keep in mind when considering book publishing today. There are a million different paths to stability, if not success—but there’s one sure route to disaster, and that’s staying in place.
http://book.pressbooks.com/chapter/or-books-john-oakes

Victoria Barnsley: 'We can't think of ourselves as book publishers any more'

Guardian reporting:
As the trays of cheese and wine begin to circulate for this autumn's book launch season, one of the UK's biggest publishing houses will be pinning its hopes not on a hardback, but on an app designed for tablet computers.
Alongside celebrity autobiographies from Victoria Pendleton and Cheryl Cole, and John Major's history of music hall, HarperCollins will be unveiling a digital reinvention of the Collins World Atlas. "It's the culmination of years of work, and it's going to be really ground-breaking," says Victoria Barnsley, UK and international chief executive of the book publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
The app presents a collection of globes suspended in space. One shows a satellite view; others are themed by population, energy or telecommunications. A few swipes, and the world lights up according to which areas have mobile coverage, or consume most oil. The information is, of course, always up to date.
"We can't think of ourselves as book publishers any longer. We have to see ourselves as, you know," Barnsley hesitates to use the cliché, "multimedia content producers."
Her flower-scented Hammersmith office, with its plush upholstery and charcoal-grey walls so dark the eyes have to adjust, is a world away from the warehouses across town on east London's Silicon Roundabout, where most new digital products are being produced.
But HarperCollins appears to have wholeheartedly embraced the e-book revolution that followed the arrival of Amazon's Kindle reader in the UK in 2009. Barnsley predicts that within 18 months, over half of revenues from her fiction titles will be digital: they already are in America. While sales of HarperCollins's paper books are flat year on year at about £120m, according to Nielsen Bookscan, digital titles are up 250% and now account for 20% of UK income.
With self-published 50 Shades of Grey author EL James as its poster child, romantic fiction is by far the biggest-selling digital category. Nearly half of sales at HarperCollins's Avon imprint, which specialises in the genre, are now in e-book format. It has responded with a me-too 50 Ways to Play and the revival of a 10-year-old title, The Bride Stripped Bare, but more importantly with "dynamic pricing".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/26/victoria-barnsley-harpercollins-cant-think-book-publishers

Random House TV launches to create shows based on books

paidcontent reporting:
Random House and Bertelsmann sister company Fremantle Media are partnering to launch a new initiative, Random House Television, that will develop TV shows based on Random House books. Random House authors will also be invited to develop original TV programming.
Fremantle produces and distributes TV shows internationally and is part of the RTL Group, Europe’s largest TV and radio broadcast company. It will have a first-look deal on Random House properties. Random House Television will be part of Random House Studio, the entertainment division formerly known as Random House Films.
According to the release, “Random House Television will work together with Random House’s editors and publishers, and their authors’ agents, to identify and acquire performance rights for the full range of broadcast network, cable, and premium television scripted formats.”
http://paidcontent.org/2012/07/25/random-house-tv-launches-to-create-shows-based-on-books/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=d8ec521a49-c%3Amed+d%3A07-26&utm_medium=email

E-Books Drive Revenue Growth Across Book Trade in January 2012

Digital Book World reporting: January 2012 was a banner month for the book trade with e-book revenue growth leading the way.
Total trade revenues were up to $503.5 million in January 2012 from $396 million in January 2011, a 27.1% increase, according to the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers. E-books led the way with $128.8 million in revenue in January 2012 versus $73.2 million in January 2011, a 76% increase.
Children’s e-book revenue grew the most in terms of percent growth, up 475.1% to $22.6 million from $3.9 million, but adult trade e-books were up the most in real dollars to $99.5 million versus $66.6 million. The adult trade e-book business is now on track to reach nearly $1.2 billion in 2012.
Growth in the religious e-book market was strong at 150.7% in January, but on a relatively small base: up to $6.7 million from $2.7 million.
In past years, a strong January for e-books was hard to match in subsequent months because of the so-called “Christmas effect,” wherein new e-readers and tablets received as gifts during the holidays were filled with books by their users in the early part of the year disproportionately compared to the later months of the year. This year, that may not be the case.
“My hunch is the Christmas lift effect is likely to be less this year than in prior years because so many devices were second or third devices, not first devices,” said publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin. “So it should be less of a challenge for subsequent months to meet the January numbers than it has been in previous years.”
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/e-books-drive-revenue-growth-across-book-trade/?et_mid=546881&rid=233619411

Simon & Schuster Chief Digital Officer Ellie Hirschhorn on Inventing the Future of Publishing

DigitalBookWorld reporting:
Do you have to be a part of book publishing’s past to help invent its future?
Take a look around at the professionals in any major publishing company and you can see the answer for yourself. The infusion of technology into books has given technologists who may have not been veterans of the book business of old a foothold in the book business of the future.
The best example might be Ellie Hirschhorn, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Simon & Schuster. In her position, Hirschhorn oversees a team of digital professionals that managed to help drive Simon & Schuster’s digital revenues up to 17% of overall revenues in 2011 – a number that Hirschhorn expects to double in 2012.
...
JG: Can you give me an example of “cross-title, programmatic opportunities”?
EH: One example is database marketing opportunities. We have amassed 750,000 names where we can do highly targeted marketing to consumers. We can do that on a title-by-title basis or a monthly, customized newsletter basis.

JG: We did a survey last year with Forrester among publishers who said they would be spending more resources on developing those kinds of databases. James McQuivey of Forrester made a distinction for us between an email list and a true customer database with rich information that can be used to sell to a consumer. Which is yours?
EH: We have both email lists and customer databases. The easier thing to amass is limited information like your email. But we can also track your on-site behavior, your clicks on discrete pieces and assets in a newsletter. But the less information you ask of people, the higher your subscriber database will be.
Our database is comprised of people who subscribe to 13 different consumer newsletters and one that is based on format – you can choose between 20 different parameters and you get a customized newsletters with books for you...
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/simon-schuster-chief-digital-officer-ellie-hirschhorn/

War Horse bucks trend as print book sales fall

BBC reporting:

The number of print books bought in the UK last year has fallen by 13%, amounting to roughly £15m in revenue, according to Nielsen BookScan data.

The worst hit section of the market was adult fiction, which dropped by 24%.
Non-fiction was also down 14%, with children's and young adult books the least affected, falling 9% - buoyed by the success of books like War Horse.
The recession, the rise of the e-book reader and the decline of the high street bookshop have been blamed.
The annual figures are measured from February to February.
Nielsen BookScan analyst David Walter said: "We saw consistently throughout 2011, and now into 2012, that Adult Fiction sales are falling faster than the rest of the market.
"This is being widely interpreted as the impact of sales moving over to e-books from physical book formats for Adult Fiction more than other genres initially."
David Nicholls' One Day was the number one title for 2011, with the film tie-in edition coming in at number seven.
The combined sales for both versions totalled over 976,000 copies, which raked in a value in excess of £5.3m.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17286981