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Book Sales Fall, E-Book Sales Soar |
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The Association of American Publishers released numbers April 7 showing that book sales fell 1.8% in 2009. That's on top of a 2.6% drop in 2008. Drilling into the numbers, adult hardcover sales rose 6.9% and adult paperbacks went down 5.2% Children's books did the opposite, with paperback sales going up 2.2% and hardcover sales going down 5.0%. The big winner? E-books, with a growth of 176.6% in 2009.
Don't miss this opportunity! Let us format your manuscript in Epub--the format of choice for the new iPad. |
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The Realities of Publishing |
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Steve Piersanti did extensive research into the state of book publishing today, and his discoveries might surprise you:
1. In 2008, there were 560,626 new books published (counting all types: print, digital, etc.)
2. From 2003 to 2008, book sales fell 13.5% from 2003 to 2008.
3. Nielsen Bookscan tracked 1.2 million books and found that 950,000 of them sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 of them sold fewer than 1000 copies. It's only because of the few best sellers that the average sales in America is as high as 500 copies.
4. Less than 1% of all books will ever be stocked by the average bookstore. Your book will complete with from 100 to 1000 others for a single space on shelves.
5. The same amount of book marketing today gets just a small fraction of the results it used to--your new book is competing with 560,000 others, as well as the seven million previously published books.
6. As a result, publishers are spending less on publicity and promotion. They expect you to have a presence in the target market and initiate a decent volume of sales yourself.
7. There is almost no market left for books that try to appeal to everyone. Successful books do a good job of reaching a narrow targeted market.
8. The cost to a publisher for a new book can easily reach six figures when you think of cost, salaries, and time involved in acquisition, editing, design, layout, production, printing, marketing, and warehousing. When you consider the average sales mentioned above, this makes each acquisition a huge risk.
9. It appears that digital books are not increasing total book sales, but are replacing printed book sales.
Will your book have a chance in this reality without professional help? |
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