Overall book sales report by the Association of American Publishers for September dropped 2% over September 2007 and continued a downward trend for January-September — down 1.5% over the same period last year. But, again, all the news is not bad news.
Those overall book sales figures seem to track with the overall retail sales figures for the country and will likely continue to slide through at least the end of the year.
Here’s a breakdown by category:
Adult HC: -29.8% (Sep), -9.2% (Jan-Sep)
Adult PB: -8.6% (Sept), +6.9% (Jan-Sep)Children’s/Young Adult HC: +41.9% (Sep), -26.3% (Jan-Sep)
Children’s/Young Adult PB: -19.1% (Sep), +8.8% (Jan-Sep)
Meanwhile, audiobooks sales continued to decline (down 12.3% for Sep and 24.7% for the year to date). Once again, sales of e-books outpaced all over formats, posting a 77.8% gain for Sep and a 55.2% gain for the year to date.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported in an article titled “Retailers Report a Sales Collapse“:
Sales at the nation’s largest retailers fell off a cliff in October, casting fresh doubt on the survival of some chains and signaling that this will probably be the weakest Christmas shopping season in decades.
As a result, according to the article, industry experts who claim that consumers can expect deep discounts on everything from necessities to luxury goods. Only Wal-Mart and BJ’s Wholesale Club reported measurable gains.
Generally, I think this is good for book publishers. Books are low-dollar items and, thus, tend to weather economic downturns better than higher-cost gift choices. We’ll see if that historical trend continues through the current recession (and subsequent depression?).
The Wall Street Journal, in “Retailers Wallow and See Only More Gloom,” followed up on the dismal Octboer sales reports that department store sales dropped almost 12% in October (compared to October 2007) and that major retailers are “predicting the worst holiday sales in decades.” They also noted:
Almost 60% of chain stores reported sales for the month that fell below already-weak forecasts. Even a 40% decline in the price of gasoline since July did little to motivate penny-pinching consumers to buy more than the basics.
The CEO of the American Booksellers Association, Avin Mark Domnitz, sent a letter to member bookstores about the economic challenges to booksellers in which he said:
[I]mmediately revisit your sales and inventory budgets. Look at how your actual sales over the last 60 days compare to last year’s sales and to your budget for this year. Is there a trend? Because most of you will do about 40 percent of your business in the fourth quarter, it is essential to make sure that you are positioned to be able to make the business decisions necessary to maximize your holiday season, especially decisions regarding inventory purchases.
Remember the goal is to control cash. And to control cash means to control inventory and to control payroll.
Reports from publishers indicate that bookstores are, indeed, controlling cash and inventory. Book returns from bookstores have apparently risen dramatically over the past couple of months. As I’ve said before on this blog, micro-publishers are taking big risks when they play the “standard” sell-stock-return game with bookstores.
Simon & Schuster’s CEO Carolyn Reidy gave a talk earlier this month at the Evangelical Christian Publisher’s Assocation CEO Summit in which she said that economic problems for publishers are likely to continue to worsen. Publishers Weekly reported that Reidy claimed:
Critical issues facing publishers included: significant decrease in retail traffic, less consumer purchasing, a gloomy economic forecast, declining backlist sales, brand name authors continuing to sell but “everything else is far off normal levels,” and retail partners who demand more favorable terms and concessions “as if we are the answer to their problems,” she said. Other pre-existing problems she enumerated include retailers competing with publishers, low barriers to self-publishing, and the economics of digital publishing that appear to bring in less revenue.
To my ear, that sounds like a lot of whining from one of the big players in NYC. She apparently does not like the fact that self-publishing is increasing the amount and variety of printed books and that e-book and print-on-demand publishing may be cutting into publishers’ income.
Finally, Charlotte Creative Loafing (I’m not making that name up) ran an interesting article titled “Indie booksellers struggle, used bookstores fare better.” After offering some tidbits from local bookstore owners, the author notes that stores rely on local big banks and “staying afloat is hard now that banks and their employees have cut back on book buying.”
At Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC, we have not seen significant changes in book sales so far. We’re keeping our fingers crossed while trying to dream up some creative options for the upcoming Christmas gift-buying season.
How’s that old Chinese curse go? May you live in interesting times.
I think today’s political and economic situation certainly qualifies as interesting.
