US News & World Report
By Jerry D. Simmons | March 9th, 2006 | No Comments » (Click to add yours!)
There is a cover story in their March 13th edition entitled Books Gone Wild! that requires some serious explaining. It starts with examples of questionable literary integrity for both writers and publishers, quite appropriately. Then jumps into the fact that according to the National Endowment of the Arts 2004 Report: Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, fewer than half of all American adults now read literature (loosely defined as fiction or poetry). It goes on to say there was a 10% decline in literary reading for all ages between 1982-2002 and a 28% decline in young adults age 18 to 24. The story estimated that 20 million potential readers in literature were lost during this period.
There is a company known in the industry as Neilsen Bookscan that tabulates book sales for publishers. In the article they report that in 2005 there were sales of $709.8 million, which represented a 9.3% increase over 2004. What the article does not explain is that Bookscan tabulates sales from a variety of retailers but not all. In other words their numbers are weighted to account for the lack of retailers that report to them. This is a bit of a problem because how they weigh the results makes a huge difference in how they report sales. This was always the problem with Bookscan so publishers tend to take their information and use it to their advantage, overlooking the holes in the data. The accuracy of their reports have always been questionable.
After reading the article I contacted Susan Pavliscak at Bookscan and asked for some explanations to their numbers. Here is the email exchange.
- Q: Is the $709.8M in sales represent gross dollar billing or how do you track that number?
- A: We list suggested retail price as part of the bibliographic date presented at the ISBN level but do not roll this up or present this in any reports.
- Q: What does this increase represent in total single copy sales versus dollars?
- A: I cannot answer this with the information I have.
- Q: Does this number take into account all types of publishing, such as academic and specialty?
- A: Please see above summary and attached list of reporting retailers.
- Q: Can you describe the trend in copy sales since you’ve been in business from 2001 to now?
- A: Over the years the panel of reporting retailers has continued to evolve (making) true year-to-year comparisons impossible. I can say that overall unit sales from 2004 to 2005, as tracked by Bookscan, were up about 9.5%
The attached document they sent me included a list of reporting stores: B. Dalton, B&N, Books-A-Million, Borders, Deseret Book Company, Hastings, Musicland (currently in bankruptcy), Tower Book and Music (just coming out of bankruptcy), Walden Books, General Independent Bookstores (weighted since all do not report), Follett College Stores, Amazon, B&N.com, Borders.com, Buy.com, Costco, Target, Kmart. Noticeably missing is the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart as well as many other significant booksellers across the country. Keep in mind, there are over 8,000 retail locations selling books. This is important to know when you read a sales report from Bookscan.
As a footnote, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) reports that total 2005 net book sales were $25.1 BILLION. To be fair, they track every single kind of book possible, including academic, specialty, and so on. Another bit of information that you need to know when evaluating sales reports in various media.
The article went on to say that in 2005 there were 200 best-selling titles that represented 10% of the total sales. Of those, Harry Potter sold 7.2 million copies, 1% of the total book sales. This supports the fact that 10% of a publishers list represents 90% of their billing. Also, if the 9.3% increase is even close to accurate, this means that publishers shipped at a minimum 18% more units into the marketplace last year than the year before, and that assumes a 50% sell through. This supports the theory that the marketplace continues to be flooded with product, creating a continual over-distribution problem.
As a writer, and future author, I cannot stress the importance of learning what goes on behind the scenes with publishing. If you do not educate yourself about the business and how you fit into the equation, your career can be over in a flash. I encourage you, BUY MY BOOK, read it, ask questions, let’s continue to create the dialogue that will help writers become successfully published authors.
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