It is the dream of every author to see their book in print. A lovely feeling to hold up the book in admiration in a shower of contentment! Even before the money rolls in, this feeling compensates for the sacrifice of long, lonely nights and brain cranking.
The feeling is stronger and sweeter in traditional publishing where the publisher does nearly all the work after the submission of your manuscript till when the author receives complimentary copies. The publisher does not stop there. He does the marketing and promotion.
With this option fast becoming the narrow gate that shrinks the more every year, many authors have resorted to self-publishing. Some authors have achieved their dreams on this platform, but many more have drowned in the deluge of books. Books, books, books everywhere!
But despite the gloomy picture, a report by Jonathan Sturgeon shows that books by self-publishers and small presses are eating into the market share of the world’s big four publishers.
According to Publisher’s Weekly, a report by the Association of American Publishers’ shows that overall publishing industry sales fell by 2.6 per cent in 2015 when compared to figures from 2014. Also sales declined in five of the seven major markets.
The only industry segments to show improvement, in fact, were adult books and books from religious presses, which increased sales by 2.2 percent and 1.2 per cent respectively. Overall industry revenue fell from $15.82 billion in 2014 to $15.41 billion in 2015.
One of the more glaring narratives to come from the report shows that digital audiobook sales, which rose by nearly 40 per cent, helped carry the adult books segment out of the red, says Sturgeon. “It’s remarkable, too, that audiobooks should be booming in a historical moment that privileges debate about the print vs. digital divide.”
Along these lines, too, adult coloring books, which are print but not conventionally so, helped bolster trade paperback sales, which rose by more than 16%. And, as was projected, ebook sales fell by 9.5% in the adult category alone. In the YA category, PW reports, ebook sales declined by 43.3%.
The picture given by the AAP report, which surveys more than 1,200 publishers, confirms speculation about weak sales in broader publishing from the end of last year.
According to Publishing Perspectives coverage of a recent BEA talk given by Kempton Mooney, Nielsen Book Senior Director of Research and Analytics, the market share of Big Five publishers has declined yearly since 2012, when it controlled 46 per cent of the market. In 2015, Big Publishing’s share had fallen by 12 per cent to 34 per cent. Meanwhile, the share of self-published books has risen by 7 per cent, from 5 per cent to 12 per cent. And, for the first time, the combined share of self-published books and books by “very small publishers” (42 per cent) is now larger than the total market share of Big Publishing (34 per cent).
First quarter numbers from several industry giants seem to confirm the trend. Hachette Book Group saw a 10.3 percent decline in sales (though it maintains that it was a profitable quarter). Despite falling sales, Michael Pietsch, Hachette’s CEO, points to sales of Hamilton: The Revolution and the further incorporation of Perseus Book Group as signs of a rebound later this year.
HarperCollins posted a similar decline in revenue, which it attributed to falling ebook sales and difficulties with foreign currency, as well as the absence of blockbusters on the level of the Divergent series. It did manage to post higher print numbers, however, due to the runaway success of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.
For Simon & Schuster’s part, revenue compared to this period in 2015 was flat, although it did experience an 8 per cent increase in earnings. Reflecting 2015 trends, adult sales were down slightly, while digital audio downloads continued to increase, which almost kept overall digital sales, made sluggish by ebook revenue, out of the red.
Penguin Random House emerged as the one bright spot in Big Publishing’s most recent quarter by posting an 11.8 per cent rise in revenue. Sales were led by a number of blockbuster books, including works by Paula Hawkins, Marie Kondo, E.L. James, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Dr. Seuss.
With its year-by-year decrease in market share, and its dismal 2016 quarterly sales numbers (Penguin Random House excepted), Big Publishing’s ongoing shrinkage appears inevitable, although several questions remain. Will declining ebook sales stabilize, as some suggest? Or will Amazon, which posted a 28 per cent increase in sales at the end of April, partly on the strength of Kindle Fire sales, continue to eat into the ebook market (presuming that is what is now happening)?
On the other hand, it must be admitted that a category uniting self-publishers with small publishers is little more than a heuristic. In broader publishing, Big Publishing still forms the only counterweight to Amazon, and the galaxy of small and smaller publishers flourishes (as ever) in spite of both.
Disappearing shelf space
In another report, Digital Books World has shown that the biggest problems facing publishing are disappearing shelf space, discovery, and pace of change. It says: “The biggest problems facing book publishers today are disappearing bookshelf space at bookstores, the growing problem of how readers will discover new authors and books, and the fast pace of change across the industry.
‘The loss of shelf space and that whole discovery mechanism — how do you replace it and how do you replace it in a way that will keep consumers going to books?’ asked Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, speaking at the Digital Book World 2014 conference in New York.
In the past decade book publishers have watched as the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. has shrunk, the number of Barnes & Noble retail stores has decreased, and the major bookstore chain Borders has gone out of business altogether. Many libraries, too, have seen their funding decrease and have dedicated more of their space to computers, movies and music.
With fewer books on fewer feet of shelf space across the country, publishers wonder how readers will discover new books and authors — especially those who are as yet unknown.
Discovery tools
New book discovery tools and trends are emerging in the industry, however, said O’Reilly Media CEO Tim O’Reilly, citing the rise of authors as the most important part of a book marketing plan due to the rise of social media. Authors are both the key to marketing a book and they develop new techniques for marketing books.
“It’s authors showing the way far more than the publishers how readers discover new books,” said O’Reilly. “You should help them in any way you can and then take what they do that works and apply it to other authors.”
While Reidy praised authors who were able to effectively market themselves and discover new marketing techniques, she pointed out that many authors didn’t want to spend time promoting themselves and wanted to focus on writing.
David Nussbaum, CEO of F+W Media, which owns and operates Digital Book World, revealed that F+W seeks to do business only with authors who have their own online marketing platforms already.
An author with a large enough marketing platform may not need a publisher, said Dominique Raccah, CEO of Naperville, Ill.-based publisher Sourcebooks.
“We’ve got to be thinking of new services and how to provide the platform,” she said. “If the author already has a platform, then why do they need us?”
The Pace of Change
Each of the CEOs speaking at Digital Book World 2014 lamented that the fast pace of change in the publishing industry makes it difficult to make good, well-informed decisions.
“We keep hearing that the rate of change is slowing down, that ebooks are plateauing,” said Raccah. “For me, it’s moving much faster and the data-gathering time is narrowing, so you’re making decisions without the data you’d like to have.”
Part of the recent changes in the media business is that now books and other media are more in direct competition with each other than ever before because they’re all available in the same place: on desktops and mobile devices.
“We’re competing against all the other media, and that’s always been a challenge, but it’s now an easier challenge for the other media,” said Simon & Schuster CEO Reidy. “We need to strengthen where books are” in the media landscape.
The Nigerian factor
In Nigeria, publishers face the same challenges other business face in the form of the cost of production, hiked by the cost of funds, inputs and epileptic electricity supply. And when they sweat through all that to produce they are met by a sluggish market were books struggle because of the legendary poor reading culture of Nigerians.
“You blame the Nigerian reader?” Thomas Alani, a Lagos resident asks. “Let’s face it, outside the school, outside textbooks, is reading not leisure?”
He continues: “Where will people who are hustling or worrying about how they will make ends meet, put food on the table, have the time or the comfort of mind to read novels? It is mostly kids of the rich who do.”
He may not be wholly correct about who reads novels in Nigeria, but his point is unmistakable.
Faced with a sluggish market, most big publishers now focus on textbook publishing on the orders of some governments and government agencies, or books recommended by schools. But some of them get their fingers burnt with the inability of some states to pay contractors.
Tough time publishing indeed!
QUOTE:“…..The only industry segments to show improvement, in fact, were adult books and books from religious presses, which increased sales by 2.2 percent and 1.2 per cent respectively. Overall industry revenue fell from $15.82 billion in 2014 to $15.41 billion in 2015.”
