The Big 5 is still 5. 

Pan-caked! 

Just before leaving for her new appointment to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Florence Pan issued her ruling on our Trial of the Century – at least until another Big 5 publisher tries the same stunt.  

Determining that the proposed acquisition by Big #1 Penguin Random House of Big #3 Simon & Schuster would “substantially lessen competition in the market for the U.S. publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books,” Judge Pan officially blocked the merger.  PRH has threatened to appeal, but some sources aren’t so sure that S&S parent Paramount will be willing to wait around.

In an interesting deal point, the original agreement between the publishing rivals included a $200 million expiration fee if the deal wasn’t consummated within 2 years of the November 24, 2020, agreement date. With S&S still raking in record sales and even higher profits (see below), maybe the media/movie giant will think twice about keeping the enormous kil...

We all love the fall.  Crisp temperatures, colorful trees, and—best of all—football.  But this year, it’s more than just the leaves that are falling.

3rd Quarter Results Head South for the Winter

The early results are in (who’s ready for election season?!), and the good people at NPD BookScan are telling us the results are not good. Through the first nine months of 2022, book sales have slid 4.8% below the same period in 2021. Adult fiction readers answered the bell, driving sales up an industry-best 9.2% for the year thus far. But in the all-important category of adult non-fiction, the bestselling book this year is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear—which came out 4 years ago! (I hear it’s pretty good).

At HarperCollins, the fall has ushered in a falling headcount.  In what might be the direst harbinger in this month’s Market Update, the Big 5 publisher (or is it 4 now?) announced an “elimination of a small [undisclosed] number of positions.”  CEO Brian Murray also signaled a hiring fr...

Writing is hard. There’s no way around it. As the old saying goes, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” What often makes writing worth doing is that challenge. It’s putting pen to paper in order to make sense of our thoughts and share them with others. That type of work takes inspiration. 

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It’s almost open enrollment for Author Coaching University – are you on our waitlist? We want you to be the first to know about the enhancements to the program for the coming year that we can’t wait to te...

Cue the marching band….

First Half Reports

With the publishing industry’s first half of 2022 in the books (see what I did there?), we all feel pretty good about the unnoteworthy results: flat.  If you’ve been with the Update for the last year or two, you know that the industry has been rocking and rolling (intentionally mixing metaphors because it’s fun).

Through June 30, 2022, trade book sales were hanging in there with the same period for 2021. The American Association of Publishers (AAP) reported survey results with sales off only 1.6% for the first six months of the year.  Adult sales fell 2.6%, but children and YA sales picked up much of the slack, coming in at 4.3% over 2021.  

Corporate earnings reports for Q2 are here, with publishing hot-shot—and the focus of so much courtroom drama of late—Simon & Schuster still crushing it. S&S saw revenues increase 34% and profits jump 54% over Q2 2021, with CEO Jonathan Karp giving special thanks to #BookTok darling Colleen Hoover.  

For those of us who majored in Economics, the dreaded word “recession” always seemed straightforward. You’re either in one, or you’re not. While the economy has become rather nuanced in the first few years of the ‘20s, the downward pressures are clearly being felt. Except in some very rare situations, books are the definition of a discretionary purchase. So, a downturn—whether or not you want to call it a recession—is definitely going to rear its ugly head here in the Update.

The folks at Variety conducted a survey in early July and found that 55% of U.S. adults expected to reduce their spending on entertainment in a recession (a category that includes books). Only 10% said that none of their spending habits would change in the event of a recession, to which their credit card companies shouted “hooray.”

Amazon Down!

Regardless of what the politicians might be telling us, the fact is that Amazon saw a drop in revenues from its online business of 4% in the second quarter. If that’s no...

Audiobooks Stay White-Hot 

The Audio Publishers Association reported double-digit revenue growth for an astonishing 10th consecutive year.  2021 audiobook sales saw an increase of 25% over 2020 – a year that was itself up 12% over the prior year.  The genre leading the way: romance, with a 75% increase in revenues for 2021.  No editorialization on such a figure will be provided by Market Update at this time. 

The number of audio titles produced in 2021 was also up—6% over the title count in 2020—for a total of 74,000 titles released in audio.  

More stats (because that’s what we do here): 

• 41% of audiobook listeners subscribe to at least one membership service (up from 38% in 2020).
• 61% of parents say their children (17 and younger) listen to audiobooks, up from 49% a year ago.

Not sure how to feel about that last figure, as it could indicate a decrease in literacy.   Perhaps it’s time to employ a centuries-old parenting mantra: “Do as I say, and not as I do.”

Bookstores ...

We are definitely seeing a slowing in several sectors of the publishing industry. The weekly numbers for May 2022 are reported later in the Update.

Wall Street Watch

The numbers for the first quarter of 2022 are coming in from Wall Street.  The results are mixed.  

We have no doubt seen a slowdown from the red-hot pandemic-fueled periods of 2020 and 2021.  But, while sales numbers for 2022 are fairly decent overall, some in the industry are clearly feeling the pinch on the profit line thanks to a steady dose of higher costs, supply chain delays, and inflation.  

For instance, HarperCollins reported a 5% increase in sales in the first 3 months of this year but settled with a 16% decrease in earnings compared to the same period last year. Most of the revenue increase can be attributed to the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquisition, but that wasn’t nearly enough to save the bottom line.

Hachette parent Lagardere was similarly helped by acquiring Workman last fall, ending 8.8% above las...

Wanna make it big on TikTok?!  Yes, if you’re an author you do—particularly a fiction author.

What is #BookTok?! 

#BookTok is a linkable “hashtag” inside of the TikTok app, and somehow it is driving book sales in a big way.  TikTok is probably not the social media platform that you would assume would be frequented by voracious readers. But apparently, they are on there. Reader-fans are going on TikTok, sharing about their new favorite book(s), and tagging them with “#BookTok.”  And the click-throughs go wild.

The smart people at NPD BookScan did some digging into this latest book marketing phenomenon. They tracked a group of 90 fiction authors who were featured on #BookTok.  Comparing those authors’ sales in 2020 (before #BookTok started) to 2021, they found that those #BookTok authors saw sales growth of 73% for the titles being tracked.  Those authors alone saw sales go from 9 million copies to 20 million copies in just one year!

Backlist Boom

For reasons not entirely determinab...

 Barnes & Noble Reports Solid Growth 

B&N CEO James Daunt reported in an interview with Publishers Weekly that despite a slow December due to the omicron COVID variant, B&N stores were trending 5%-6% above pre-pandemic 2019 numbers.  Daunt cited two factors that drove increases in overall book sales: backlist sales and BookTok.  BookTok seems to have ignited the interest of young people in books, with teenagers and young adults responding to the recent hashtag-related social media marketing trend.

Daunt also credited the hasty store remodeling that occurred during the pandemic as a source of increased foot traffic and corresponding product sales.  While that effort was done mostly with existing furniture and fixtures, B&N is now taking about 30-40 stores through a more comprehensive remodel, with the plan to update all locations as soon as feasible.

Amazon Shutters

Well, its bookstores, anyway.  Amazon has announced the closing of all Amazon Books locations, as well as Amazon 4-Sta...

David beat Goliath! 

At least in the 4th quarter of 2021. While Amazon’s online sales fell 1% in Q4 of 2021, brick-and-mortar bookstores saw an increase of over 43%. Bookstores finished the year up 28% over 2020—a year when all of the retail sector was up only 19.3%. Though that jump still left bookstores short of pre-pandemic 2019 by 1%.

2021 Corporate Reports 

The 2021 year-end results are rolling in from the Big 5 (or 4, or 3, or whatever it is this week).  

Simon & Schuster continues to increase its resale value – even though they are technically in escrow to Penguin Random House (pending a legal contest from the DoJ). S&S ended 2021 up 10% in sales and a whopping 52% increase in operating income.  

Hachette's parent company, Lagardere, reported a 9.4% revenue increase, with earnings up a phenomenal 42.7%.  Hachette’s US division was up 3.7% for the year. The company is, however, forecasting a flat 2022, as it anticipates that people will be reading less as the pandemic winds ...