Market Checkup

 AAP's mandate covers both the general and the specific — broad issues important to all publishers as well as issues of specific concern to particular segments of the industry. The Association's "core" programs deal with matters of general interest:intellectual property; new technology and digital issues of concern to publishers; Freedom to read, censorship and libel; international freedom to publish; funding for education and libraries; postal rates and regulations; tax and trade policy; international copyright enforcement. Directed by standing committees of the Association, these programs, along with a host of membership services including government affairs, a broad-based statistical program, public information and press relations, are the "core" activities of the Association.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP), the national trade association for US book publishing industry, reported children's book sales results for July, and the numbers are down from last year. Hardcover Children’s/YA sales are down 19.1 percent for the month with sales of $45.1 million in July, and year-to-date sales are down by 16 percent. Children’s/YA Paperback sales decreased 1.7 percent in July with sales totaling $50.0 million; sales fell 5.9 percent for the year to date.

In comparison, Adult Hardcover category was down 15.2 percent in July with sales of $74.1 million, although sales for the year-to-date are up by 10.2 percent. Adult Paperback sales decreased 10.1 percent for the month ($111.1 million) but increased by 8.6 percent for the year. Adult Mass Market sales decreased 11.0 percent for July with sales totaling $60.6 million; sales were down by 13.1 percent year to date.

E-book sales continue to grow, with a 150.2 percent increase over July 2009 ($40.8 million); year-to-date E-book sales are up 191.0 percent. Downloaded Audio Books also saw an increase of 38.4 percent over last year, with sales of $6.6 million this July; and the category was also up 35.3 percent year-to-date. Physical Audio Book sales decreased 35.6 percent in July with sales totaling $8.7 million; sales for the year to date are down 0.6 percent.

Higher Education publishing sales increased 0.2 percent for the month ($926.4 million) and increased 13.5 percent for the year. Finally, the K-12 elementary/high school category posted total net sales of $729.9 million, up 4.2 percent over the prior year, and year-to-date sales of $2.2 billion, a 13.5 percent increase over 2009.

Rankingly Obsessed

Amazon has sold more than 7.5 million unique titles at this point, and rankings indicate a title must sell at least one copy a year to remain above a rank of two million - Morris Rosenthal, Foner Books 

Getting your book published is a exciting, awesome journey, but once it hits the shelves, you might think that writers relax and wait for the royalty checks to arrive in the mail... alas, it's not true. I'd say the majority of the writers I know start obsessing (at least a little) about sales. The first place they look is at their Amazon sales rankings. Your Amazon sales rank is a number that says how many other titles sold more than your book. The smaller the number, the better the sales. The number is re-computed daily (for obsessors who need to know)

 For example, a major publisher tracked 25 titles over a six month period, correlating the weekly Amazon sales rank with actual reported sales from Amazon. Here is what they found correlating Amazon Sales Rank with real sales:

Amazon Actual
Sale Rank              Books Sold per week
---------------------     -------------------------------
75-100                  250-275/wk
100-200                225-249/wk
200-300                150-200/wk
450-750                75-100/wk
750-3,000             40-75/wk
3,000-9,000          15-20/wk
10,000+                1-5/wk

Source: Rampant Techpress

There are fluctuations in Amazon sales rank when the book is first released - When the initial backorder is filled, the sales rank plummets (sometimes below 1,000) for a brief period. Thee there may be a large drops in rank when there is a bulk order. Not all books are treated equally -- the top 1,000 are recalculated hourly, the next chunk (up to 100,000 (estimated)) weekly, while the rest, monthly. 

Also available to obsessed writers are helpful Internet sites which track you sales for you, like Novelrank.com. NovelRank uses Amazon sales data, and is a free website for authors to track their Amazon Sales Rank on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.de (Germany), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan).

So, feel free to go forth and obsess, but not too much!

Publishing A'mazoning

Kindle Currently has 90% of ebook Market - TBI Research

Amazon is launching a new "70% royalty option" for the Kindle. Under this option, Amazon will pay authors and publishers a royalty of 70% of the list price of Kindle books, which is a far higher per-copy royalty than most authors receive on physical book sales (including the standard Kindle book royalties).

This new plan will encourage more authors to "go direct" to Amazon (or at least force their publishers to sell ebooks at a substantial discount). This, in turn, will increase the pressure on traditional publishers to cut prices on wholesale Kindle books. And that, in turn, will transform the Kindle business from a big money-loser into a very profitable business for Amazon.

The traditional publishing industry feels that cuts in ebook prices will wipe out what little margin the publishers have left, thus preventing publishers from paying authors big advances and, thus result in fewer good books being published. But, as ebook prices drop, unit velocity will increase, leading to higher revenues. So this is where the book industry is headed, whether traditional publishers want it to or not. Amazon's new plan should help shorten the time it takes to get there. The plan should also solidify Amazon's already tremendous dominance of the ebook business.

Survival of the Fittest

It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change – Charles Darwin

When talking of changing publishing paradigms I mentioned independent booksellers and how the rapidly morphing publishing industry is affecting their business. I ran across a very interesting article, Evolve or Die: Why Reinvent Independent Bookstores? by Praveen Madan and Christin Evans, proprietors of the Booksmith in San Francisco. He relays some sobering statistics:

In 1993, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) had 4,700 member stores. By the start of 2009, the number had fallen to 1,600. We are seeing an average of about 200 independent bookstores close every year.

In order to compete in the new age of publishing, Indies need to evolve, as Darwin states, to survive with the times, or go extinct. Indies must struggle with key questions as they look to the future -- What business are they in? Who are their customers? and What are they competing for? Many indies are stuck in a time warp – quaint, dusty, technologically stagnant shops that haven’t changed much in decades (many, sadly to say have not utilized the internet wisely). While Indies have become frozen in time, consumer tastes, market realities and the competition have been marching on at warp speed.

Praveen and Christin are hopeful though – they feel that this is this is a time of great opportunity for Indies, in five key areas: Building literary communities and providing author services for writers; Enhancing the browsing experience of customers; Making print on demand books available; and by Tapping into new markets since only ½ of adult Americans read, that’s half the market left! So for Indies, Carpe Diem – do or die!

Bell Tolls for Kirkus

Asking a writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp post how it feels about dogs - Ann Landers

Reviews... the word sends a chill down an author's spine (okay, I exaggerate a little) We authors, no matter how nonchalant, can't help but notice what others are saying about our book. You can ignore most, but it's hard to ignore professional reviews that appear in the media -- they have the power to affect  book sales and perhaps, even your career as a writer.   Interestingly, a paper titled "Is Any Publicity Good Publicity? A Note On the Impact of Book Reviews", by Alan T. Sorensen, a business school professor at Stanford university, shed some light on the topic.

The paper used detailed weekly data on sales of hardcover fiction books to evaluate the impact of New York Times book reviews on sales. In order to weigh the relative propensity of reviews to inform and to persuade, the analysis utilized a measure of review opinion obtained through a systematic reading of each review. The estimates indicated that in the case of bookreviews, any publicity is good publicity: even negative reviews lead to increases in sales.These findings were interpreted as evidence that book reviews serve largely to inform consumers about books’ content and characteristics (including the books’ existence). However, positive reviews can have a larger impact on sales than negative reviews, suggesting that reviews also have a persuasive effect.

So, there we have it -- reviews, good or bad can help boost sales! So it is with great sadness that I note that one of the venerable reviewers in the book industry, Kikus, is shutting down. Founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus, it is currently scheduled to cease publication at the end of calendar year 2009. Both, Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, two venerable chronicles of the newspaper and book publishing industries, are closing as their owner, Nielsen Business Media, gets out of the trade publication business.