Market News: September
Despite the problems, there’s been significant growth in the last three years in book sales. Especially in adult fiction. This is good news.
Book market is healthy
Since 2008, there’s been 5.6 percent growth in the book market, according to a recently released BookStats report. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), this is the most comprehensive report to date. Specifically mentioned was adult fiction, which has shown growth of 8.8 percent in the this time period.
What share of the market do ebooks have?
Again, according to BookStats, ebooks account for 6.4 percent of the overall trade market in 2010. Which means the lion’s share of books are still paper. However, here’s where playing with numbers gets interesting.
That 6.4 percent represents 1,272.1 percent growth in just three years from 2008. Back then, ebooks were only 0.06 percent of the overall market. As I’ve shared in numerous columns, the exponential 1,800+ percent growth predicted this year for the ebook reader market is sure to be followed by exponential growth in ebooks for those readers.
Borders down for the count
In Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Borders announced it will be liquidating the rest of its assets, which means closing its remaining stores. Borders.com online is still open for business, however, and the company is still promoting its ebook readers. There is hope Books-A-Million will acquire 35 of the Borders stores, but no final word on that or what stores would be involved as of press date.
Christianbook.com CBDReader Available
Christianbook.com has had a CBDReader for a while. This reader allows ebooks to be read by any computer with an Internet browser, so tablet computers as well as regular computers can read books.
But the company has now made the CBDReader available free as an App in the Apple Store and for the Android market. This expands the Christianbook.com market to smart phones, which is a growing trend in marketing these days.
Two Marketing Tips
More ways to reach libraries: Donating a book to the main branches of your library could help, if the librarians read it, recommend it to patrons, and decide to buy copies for the other branches. (Note: Many libraries automatically funnel all donations to their “Friends of the Library” organization for book sales. Be sure your librarian understands your donation is for the collection.)
To donate effectively, cultivate relationships with the collection development librarians in your area. Offer to do book talks or other programming—for adults or children. You can also email information about your book to libraries, which usually have their email addresses available on the internet.
- Know Who Your Readers Are: This sounds obvious, but what’s the demographic of the people reading your books? Are people reading your book that you didn’t expect? That’s happened to me, with twenty-something moms and men married more than 10 years. Be specific. You may find there are other places it would make sense to promote your book once you identify these parts of your audience and figure out where they tend to hang out.
God bless you and the work of your hands.