Industry Survey June-July

In regards as to how to sell a print book this quarter has thrown up a few suggestions. With the high streets shrinking every day there are suggestions that retailers need to exploit the customers need for a community. They should be seeking to make their shop a social hot spot. Another positive for local shops is that books about the local area appear to still sell well and to be ‘Amazon and E-Reader proof.

Hardback’s have taken a bit of a slamming with a somewhat sneery comment that people only buy them if they are rich or don’t know how to work a computer. This is somewhat undermined by growing sales as e-books simply don’t sell in the gift market. This is further reinforced as people don’t collect e-books this particular function is being left for print to enjoy. One issue brought up a few times is about the rather sorry state of British Illustration. With suggestions that any new illustrators looking for interesting work end up over seas, as our market is becoming more and more conservative.

In regards to E-books the market hits a peak and then falls after Christmas - as people buy books for their new devices and then become a tad less giddy. Something that comes up time and time again is the concern of the lack of curation in e-books. Which partly because of the plethora of terrible free self-published work but also as Publishers are scrambling to justify their role. We reach a land mark this quarter as Random House hits the 2 million mark in e-book sales and more and more e-books are launched by the likes of Ladybird and Faber and Faber.

There is a lot of positivity and buzz around App’s this quarter as I think publishers are finally working out what they can do with them. They have the advantage of colour, moving image and sound allowing children’s books to move into digital. They also can avoid Amazons stranglehold on pricing as Apples allows you to publish for free. Though Magazines still wait for a device that they feel will do their product justice, size of readers and the restrictions of HTML citied as key problems.

Overall the market is less gloomy than previously despite the deepening recession. There is a feeling that we are in an in-between stage where people can see there is value in digital but don’t quite know how to realise it. There is also an interesting point raised about how markets will work digitally worldwide. It is expected that markets will become language based rather than region based. There is also an expectation that by selling digitally that we will be able to gather much more information about customers. This is seen to be a huge positive and a great selling tool.

There are a few thorny issues concerning the industry as a whole. Firstly the problem of e-lending at Libraries remains in total disarray. Secondly the industry feels that the current government is anti-book, particularly as libraries are directly targeted for closure. Then finally the issue of piracy is still a big concern - all of which means that despite the more optimistic feel there is still certainly a sense of urgency. A feeling described as ‘almost a moral battle’ as booksellers search for a path into our technological future.