Industry Statistics: Looking Behind the Numbers
And, of course, neither AAP’s nor BISG’s report shows whether growth is taking place among larger or smaller publishers, or both. For example, Subtext reports that sales of the 12 largest trade publishers grew from $8.4 billion in 2005 to $8.6 billion in 2006. It would be useful to know whether these figures fairly represent the large-
publisher market share (roughly 59 percent to 60 percent) of the database used in BISG’s “Trends,” which reported sales growth during the same period for the total trade sector of from $14 billion to $14.5 billion—which we would know if BISG also provided breakdowns by size of publisher.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
- American Booksellers Association
- Association of American Publishers
- Book Publishing Report
- Bowker
- Consortium
- Evangelical Christian Publishers Association
- Fordham University
- Independent Publishers Group
- National Association of College Stores
- National Book Network (NBN)
- Nielsen Media Research
- PMA
- Publishers Weekly
- Simba Information
- The Book Industry Study Group
- Places:
- Manhattan
- United States
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.