Nielsen BookScan

A Dull Holiday Season?
December 22, 2016 at 4:00 am

The hoped for post-election and holiday season sales bounce does not seem to be materializing. Unit sales of print books were down almost 6% between Thanksgiving week and the week ended December 18, 2016 compared to the similar period in 2015 at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. Perhaps the most worrisome for booksellers and…

Self-Publishing & Big Five Dominate Book Market, According to Nielsen
November 9, 2015 at 11:14 am

Frankfurt Book Fair 2015 is in the rearview mirror but there were a few noteworthy tidbits gleaned from the event. Nielsen’s Jonathan Stolper shared some of the more important facts and figures in his state-of-the-U.S.-market presentation. Although you can argue Nielsen’s data isn’t complete and it’s therefore far from perfect, it’s one of the few…

Nielsen Values Indian Publishing at $3.9 Billion
October 21, 2015 at 2:16 pm

The India Book Market Report released by Nielsen at Frankfurt Book Fair last week values the print book market in India, including book imports, at $3.9 billion. This positions India among the largest English-language book markets in the world. The compound annual growth rate of the market is 20.4% between 2011-12 and 2014-15, according to…

By Focusing Only on Today's Bestsellers, Legacy Publishers Are Missing Out on Bestsellers of Tomorrow
June 15, 2015

In the world of disruptive innovation, customers aren't just people who pay you money for whatever physical stuff your business shovels out the door.

Traditional publishers would never think this way, but authors are their "customers" because authors are seeking someone to provide the service of replicating their books and effectively moving those books into the stream of commerce.

The mega-selling 1% of authors are the most profitable customers for the services provided by publishers. They will be the last to go in part because, like the best customers of any business, they get the best deals.

Nielsen Says eBook Sales Dipped 6% in 2014, But Their Numbers Smell Funny
June 1, 2015

Nielsen has just given us a great example of why one should always take publicly announced stats with a grain of salt. The Bookseller caught up with a story from Book Expo America this morning. Sarah Shaffi reports that reps from Nielsen gave a presentation and shared bad news about the US ebook market:

E-book sales in the US declined by 6% in 2014 compared to the year before, statistics released by Nielsen show.

How Big Is Indian Publishing, Really? Coming: A Survey with the Answers
February 25, 2015

Indian publishing is always in the news. It could be a mega litfest or a bestselling author whom the intelligentsia sneers at; it could be a book sought to be banned, an author who gives up writing unable to thwart the right wing loonies at his door, or even the biggest book fair in the Third World, in New Delhi, which ended on February 22.

No transparency
Yet, much of the book industry in India is make-believe and hype. Publishers operate behind a wall of secrecy and books are mostly sold by generating buzz

Authors and Publishers May Constrain the Rise of Ebook Subscriptions
January 23, 2015

The subscription model has already taken off in music and television, with providers such as Spotify and Netflix. Consumers have shown an increasing preference for such all-you-can-eat bundles, as opposed to buying each item separately. That worries book publishers and authors, who still make most of their money from sales of single copies. So far they have approached subscription services cautiously, holding back their newest and most popular titles from them. Only three of America's five biggest publishers have so far made their works available on Oyster or Scribd.

Sales of Printed Books in UK Fall by More Than £150m in Five Years
January 13, 2015

Print sales of adult fiction have declined by over £150m since 2009, new figures show, as ebooks take an increasingly large bite out of the market.

A review of 2014 from book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan shows that while the decline in sales of print books in the UK slowed last year, with value sales down 1.3% to £1.39bn, and volume sales down 1.9% to 180m, the performance for printed adult fiction was markedly worse. The adult fiction market was the worst-performing of all areas of the book business, down by 5.3% in 2014

World's Richest Authors List Joined by Veronica Roth, Gillian Flynn and John Green
September 11, 2014

Novelist Veronica Roth, just 26 years old, earned $17m (£10.5m) last year thanks to her dystopian young adult trilogy Divergent, making her one of the richest authors in the world, according to Forbes.

The list of the world's top-earning authors was released by Forbes on Monday. Topped by thriller writer James Patterson, it includes three names that have never appeared in the ranking before. Sixth-placed Roth, whose smash-hit stories are set in a world where people are defined and organised according to their dominant personality traits

UK Independent Bookshops in Decline as Buying Habits Change
February 21, 2014

The number of independent bookshops gracing British high streets has fallen below 1,000 - a third fewer than nine years ago, amid cut-throat competition from supermarkets, Amazon and ebooks.

Booksellers warned that the health of the publishing industry was at risk as new figures revealed more than 500 independent outlets have shut since 2005.