Bowker has released a special analysis of title counts in the fast-growing self-published books segment. The new tabulations follow data from the company earlier in the year showing self-published print books comprising a substantial portion of the “traditional” annual output. (“Traditional” books does not count the over one million titles from POD factories.) When first reported in June, Bowker said self-published print books accounted for 36 percent of the “traditional” production in 2011; now the new report puts the total of 148,424 printed self-published books last year at 43 percent of the “traditional” output. While Bowker’s main year-to-year stats still […]
Industry Statistics
International: Bertelsmann Drops Gruner + Jahr Buyout Plan; UK Kindle Lending; Casual Vacancy Passes A Million
Gruner + Jahr said in a statement Friday that, contrary to earlier indications from August, Bertelsmann will not buy up the remaining 25.1 percent in the company not already under its control. “In our intensive and constructive talks with Bertelsmann, we came to the conclusion that the challenges ahead for G&J can best be mastered together,” Jahr managing director Winfried Steeger, managing director of Jahr Holding said in the statement obtained by Bloomberg. Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Rabe added: “Bertelsmann will continue its more than 40 year long, successful relationship with the Jahr family. We are in a strong position to […]
eNews: Consortium Launches Thema Global Codes Standard
In an attempt to streamline book category and classification codes into a unified standard, a group of book industry representatives from 15 companies are joining forces on Thema, which continues the work already begun by the iBIC project jointly owned by Nielsen and the Book Industry Communication. Both entities donated the iBIC intellectual property to Thema’s board of directors for the creation of the global standard. For now, Thema will function alongside such national book-categorization standards as BIC, BISAC, and CLIL, but the plan is to move all involved markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and […]
Rowling Print Sales Are Similar In the US and UK
In its first week on sale, JK Rowling’s highly-anticipated THE CASUAL VACANCY sold approximately 157,000 printed copies in the US in the sales outlets tracked by Nielsen Bookscan. In the UK, where Nielsen Bookscan tracks nearly the entire print sales landscape, they counted sales of roughly 125,000 copies in the first week on sale. The publisher has not reported on ebook sales in either territory.
Charting the Slowdown In eBook Growth
Further to yesterday’s reporting of AAP monthly sales data for April, we have updated versions of our standing charts of ebook sales patterns. One clear trend is that the days of doubling or more are over; as the ebook sales base rises, the year-over-year growth is moderating. In fact, over the past few months, that growth rate has dropped dramatically. As this tabulation shows, September 2011 was the last time AAP-monitored ebook sales doubled. The growth rate diminished in October, just in time for the biggest quarter of book sales, and held through the post-Christmas ebook spike in January. But […]
A Closer Look at What BookStats Says About the Trade (It’s Still Flat)
Now that BookStats has released some additional data to their paying subscribers, we’re allowed to provide deeper coverage of our own of their “extrapolations” of revenue shifts across trade publishing. (Our first story is here.) As a standing reminder, we subtract religious book sales of roughly $1.5 billion from the BookStats “trade” data. So all of the data you see below is our own modification and analysis of tables generously provided by BookStats. And this all derives from two relatively simple spreadsheets; the BookStats full annual report and electronic digital dashboard provide a wealth of additional, highly granular data across […]