London's Great
Flood
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2003)
All
circuits are go for this year’s London Book Fair,
which returns on March 16 – 18 to the Olympia Exhibition
Centre with its usual bagful of rights-trading (400
tables at the International Rights Centre are
virtually sold out); foreign affairs (“huge” stands
from Belgium and Greece); and industry seminars (such
as ePub London, chock full of “practicalities
and mini-case studies”). “We’re on track for 6% growth
in overall size of the show,” Exhibition Director Alistair
Burtenshaw tells PT. “Preregistration is
looking very positive indeed.”
If only the same could be said of the British book market,
which suffered a dearth of high-profile author output
and bobbling frontlist sales in the first half of last
year, leading some to charge that publishers were punishing
the industry by saving up their big guns for the Christmas
blitz. That's the opening question, anyway, of “The
Great Autumn Flood: Good for Business?”, a presentation
prepared by Nielsen BookScan’s Richard Knight
and originally scheduled for last
November, but postponed after booksellers said they
were too clobbered by the holiday onslaught.
The presentation may have been sacked, but here's the
take-home message. Analyzing sales in the UK over the
last five years, Knight says he’s confirmed the obvious:
September and October log 25% higher title output when
indexed against an average month, and 40% more books
are handled in September than in February. As for last
year’s dismal showing, he found no difference between
2002 and previous years: “In fact, 2002 remained very
poor on top author output in the UK, but the market
eventually compensated (as it always does with books)
so the year ended up being ‘OK’.” So does the “Great
Flood” work? “Looking at the lifetime sales of books
launched at different times of the year actually shows
that publishers are right to keep some books back to
the last quarter or autumn release,” says Knight. An
October biography will see three times more copies sold
than biographies launched in the spring, owing to the
crucial Christmas gift factor for this genre. For midlist
paperback fiction, a spring release actually turns in
a slightly better sales performance. And top fiction
authors can launch at any time of the year, with books
sailing off the shelves. Somebody tell John Grisham
his next holiday offering ought to be Skipping Groundhog
Day.
©2003
Publishing Trends
