Strategically Speaking: Surviving Volatility
On Aug. 9, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) gave the book publishing community an early glimpse of the BookStats project—the joint effort of these two industry stalwarts. For those of you new to the BookStats project, the program was created to provide publishers with a comprehensive view of industry sales—across product lines, formats and distribution channels. The project was based on information provided by almost 2,000 publishers using this baseline information to project statistics for the industry as a whole. A glimpse at the BookStats study revealed much interesting and important information, particularly in its reporting of industry growth in sales, from 2008 to 2010, of 5.6 percent—a remarkable achievement in the soft economy of recent years. It also showed a dramatic increase in e-book sales, in both dollars and units, and continued erosion of the market share of brick-and-mortar retailers to the benefit of online booksellers and mass merchants. Here are some of the highlights from the preliminary report: