The industry’s pace of change quickens as digital content technologies advance, print-on-demand becomes more prevalent, and declining readership and reaching today’s consumers continue to pose significant challenges.

By James Sturdivant

Given such sobering news, it can seem as if the book industry is at the mercy of larger social trends. Not so, according to industry executives and analysts, most of whom agree that the challenge for publishers today is essentially one of helping consumers discover the right book at the right time.

The situation is summed up well by Albert M. Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business Administration and a principal contributor to the Book Industry Study Group’s (BISG) “Trends 2007” report. “The industry has tried to come up with a lot of books that hopefully will appeal to a large segment of the population, but has never done serious consumer marketing research,” he says. Combine this with the fact that, of the nearly 300,000 books published in 2006, only a few thousand were reviewed, and a situation results where releases with a lot of potential appeal do not get on people’s radar screens, according to Greco.