Publishers, authors, booksellers, and agents are crowded together this week attending the annual BEA (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) convention in New York City. Read the latest news:
Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) reports “preliminary results from an ambitious new book publishing industry survey show growth in both revenues and units sold across the contemporary book publishing landscape.” The "BookStats" survey shows
Growth was seen for publishers of all sizes with medium- and small-sized publishers leading the way. Over 50% of the publishers surveyed were enjoying growth, Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at RR Bowker, said.
Data is broken down by content categories (trade fiction and non-fiction, juvenile, religious, K-12, higher education, professional and scholarly); formats (physical and non-physical delivery platforms); and distribution channel.
Not surprisingly, hardcover and softcover markets have seen declines, while digital formats such as e-books and apps are growing.
Adult fiction is "a stalwart category" enjoying healthy growth, as are all categories of juvenile titles, Gallagher said. Nonfiction adult, however is "struggling."
While chain bookstores are registering predicable declines, independent bookstores are holding their own, showing stable sales or just slight declines. "I think it's a great story line that the independents are showing some resiliency," Gallagher said.
Book Business also reports on the International Digital Publishing Forum conference at BEA about “surprising new information on consumer and student ebook reading habits.
Of consumers surveyed in January 2011, 77.3% are "satisfied" or "highly satisfied" with the price of ebooks.... The feature sets most desired in ebooks are affordability (seen by 75% of respondents as "very important"), followed by readability, ease of acquisition, portability (all over 70%) and speed (over 60%). Searchability and eco-friendliness were important to 35% of respondents, though the later is growing as a factor.
Among reading devices, consumers are most satisfied with Amazon's Kindle (75%) followed by the Nook (70%) and iPad (60%).
Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on paidContent (@paidContent) about Barnes & Noble announcing a new WiFi-only Nook and Amazon responding with a cheaper 3G edition of the Kindle.
And Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) covered the American Booksellers Association's annual meeting, where CEO Oren Teicher called for new business models for the trade; he
dispensed with the usual CEO report reviewing the association's activities of the past year and instead gave a wide-ranging talk outlining how booksellers and publishers "can work more closely together in the common goal of selling more books" and maintaining bricks-and-mortar bookstores' role as "the essential showroom in ensuring the sales of a broad spectrum of titles," a browsing experience no one else can offer.
Also read CBA's coverage, "Ebooks command BEA spotlight, but stores still needed, many say." Then read our wrap-up blog post "BEA, Blog World Expo NY, & BookBloggerCon."
