American Booksellers Association

Celebrating the joy of shared reading

With a battered economy dragging down just about every retail sector, a salient fact making headlines has been the ability of discounters to maintain sales growth—a sure sign that the “Wal-Mart Effect” has permeated every corner of the business world, and that raising prices is probably not the way to realize profits. This leaves cost-cutting, which, for obvious reasons, book publishers would like to pursue aggressively without sacrificing either product quality or valued employees. Here are some tips from a cross-section of the publishing world for reining in costs without sacrificing too much in the process.

41% Percentage of items purchased worldwide over the Internet in the past three months that were books, making books the most popular online purchase. In the United States alone, books were the second-most popular purchase (38 percent) behind clothing, accessories and shoes (41 percent). Source: Nielsen Global Online Survey, January 2008 5 Number of Top 10 best-selling novels in Japan in 2007 that originated as cell-phone novels and were later republished in book form. Usually love stories written in short, text-message-like sentences, cell-phone novels are originally composed and shared with fans via cell phones. The top three best-selling novels were written by first-time, cell-phone

Ever since the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hit upon the theme of “Making Information Pay” for its annual spring event several years ago, it has been filling the room with industry analysts and marketing and business development executives eager for new insights into the mysteries of our industry’s operation, well-being and future. The attendees are generally more interested, I think, in road signs pointing to where we’re going than in measures of where we are—more acutely aware that, in some ways, the information camera may not focus as well on today’s industry snapshots. Useful and reliable industry information always has been hard to

Contrary to the notion that independently owned booksellers are on the decline, smaller, non-corporate-owned retailers have shown strong growth in the last few years, according to the American Booksellers Association (ABA). The ABA reported 97 new stores that became members of the group last year, more than the 90 members from 2005. The group has about 1,700 company members that represent about 2,400 storefront locations. Meg Zelickson Smith, director of membership marketing for the ABA, spoke with Book Business Extra about the independent booksellers of today, and how they are affecting the industry. Book Business Extra: What do you believe is causing people to want to

14 percent The number of book publishers who saw e-book production as a sales opportunity rose from 10 percent to 24 percent from 2003 to 2006. Source: The Industry Source, October 2006 #1 According to a recent survey of 100 publishers, printing is the No. 1 area where book publishers face the most pressure to innovate. Source: Transcontinental 2008 & 2009 During its 2008 trade show, the Frankfurt Book Fair will feature Turkey as its guest country. In 2009, China will serve as the guest country. Top 10 Google announced the top 10 books searched for using Google Book Search.

The organizers of a national book award are hoping the pizzaz of a “Hollywood-style” ceremony and its consumer-driven online voting process will help draw some mainstream attention back to the written word. With the announcement of the nominations this week for the second annual edition of the Quill Book Awards, online voters will have the next month to vote for the books they believe deserve to be presented on network TV as the best of the year. This year’s nominated books for the Quill Awards were released on NBC’s “The Today Show” earlier this week. The network, the award’s broadcast partner, will also air a