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

E-Books via Kindle FreeTime Unlimited: Game-Changer or Non-Starter?

PW reporting:

Amazon’s launch of Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, announced earlier this week, could change the way e-books are distributed to consumers. But the new subscription service, which is targeted at kids between ages three and eight and offers access to books, games, movies, TV shows and educational apps, raises questions and red flags for the publishing industry.

Andrews McMeel is one publisher providing select titles from its AMP! Comics for Kids imprint, including Big Nate books. “It’s a safe environment for kids and families to access digital content and a good way for us to build awareness for our brands,” says Kirsty Melville, president and publisher of AM’s book division. “We learn things every time we partner with different distribution models. Lots of people are trying to reach kids as they get more access to digital devices, and this is an interesting opportunity to explore a new way to give kids access to our content and see what happens.”

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2230297/relevant-content-is-key-to-getting-digital-news-readers-interested-in-mobile-ads#disqus_thread

Children’s E-Books Surge in First Half of 2012, Paperback Sales Sag

dwb reporting:
Revenues from children’s and young adult e-books were up to $146.4 million in the first half of 2012, an increase of 252% over the same period last year. At the same time, adult trade e-books were up 34.4% in the first half, a marked slowdown from triple-digit growth a year earlier. Meanwhile, trade paperback sales are down about 20%, presumably losing sales to e-book buyers.
Overall, e-book sales accounted for about 25% of total trade sales, up to $768 million for the first half, an increase of 52% over the same period last year, according to Publishers Lunch.
From 2007 through 2011, e-book sales doubled or more every year. Digital growth at major trade publishing companies like Random House and Hachette — bellwethers for the industry — has slowed, too. Digital publishing revenues at both companies now represent 27% of total revenues, up from about 21% the year before.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/childrens-e-books-surge-in-first-half-of-2012-paperback-sales-sag/

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

Ebooks shouldn't be restricted by European borders

Guardian reporting:
Europe, including the UK, would have a growing economy today if we had a real digital single market. Just look at the ebooks market. While ebooks are booming around the world, Europe is shooting itself in the foot. Our fledgling ebooks market is fragmented along national lines and struggles to make up 1% of the total books market, though at least the UK gives us hope by reaching 15%.
In the United States, where ebooks are 31% of the market, print isn't dying. More people are reading more books than ever before. They also make books social by interacting with texts and sharing their favourite parts.
By failing to ride this wave authors lose millions and consumers lack choice. Publishers kill income streams. At a time when the mantra of leaders is "jobs, jobs, jobs" we are waving goodbye to all the jobs a healthy ebooks ecosystem generates.
But the ebooks industry is waking up. Earlier this week in Brussels a "books without borders" declaration was created. The signatories endorsed the principle that there should be no barriers for consumers to acquire ebooks across borders of territories, of platforms or of devices. They agree that we need a neutral VAT regime for books.
Now it's time to turn those nice words into action. The point of the EU is to get rid of borders, and nothing is more ridiculous than stopping an ebook at a border. Why have ebooks if not to access them in an instant: any time, anywhere, to any device.
It makes sense. When you buy a printed book it's yours to take where you like. It should be the same with an ebook. Of course, there are already apps that will handle ebook files from all major platforms. Amazon Kindle apps do this. But what if you want to take your Amazon purchases elsewhere? What if you want to open other files in your Amazon app? That's the sort of functionality we need to enable.
The problem is not technology itself. Problems such as interoperability between different ebook readers have been solved in other areas. You can now open a document on different computers, so why not an ebook on different platforms and in different apps? It's time for open standards here.
The problem is not copyright restrictions. Most authors do not divide up digital publishing rights by territory. So you should be able to buy an ebook from a website based in another EU country. It is ridiculous that today people end up lying about where they live to cheat the system, or are forced to buy from the US. Piracy is fostered by this impossibility to buy legally.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/28/ebooks-restricted-european-borders?newsfeed=true