Book Publishers Go Back to Basics (WSJ)

Book publishers are giving an advance review of the industry’s future, and it looks a lot like the past.

After a decade of technological upheaval and lackluster growth, executives at the top four U.S. consumer book publishers say they are done relying on newfangled formats to boost growth.

It has been nearly 10 years since Amazon.com Inc. introduced its Kindle e-book reader amid the financial crisis, destabilizing publishers and challenging their well-honed business models.

Now, e-book sales are on the decline, making up a fraction of publishers’ revenue, and traditional book sales are rising. The consumer books industry is enjoying steady growth in the U.S., with total revenue increasing about 5% from 2013 to 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Executives gathered in Frankfurt for the industry’s biggest trade fair said they are returning to fundamentals: buying and printing books that readers want to buy—and they are streamlining their businesses to get them out faster than ever before.
It is about “knowing what [readers] want,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Bertelsmann SE and Pearson PLC’s joint venture Penguin Random House, “to drive demand at scale.”

The shift is a surprise reversal for an industry that experts just a decade ago predicted was facing radical change, if not a slow death, because of digitization and changing reading habits. Instead, e-book sales in the U.S. were down about 17% last year, according to the AAP industry group, while printed book revenue rose 4.5%.

Interviews at the Frankfurt Book Fair with the top four consumer book publishers in the U.S.—Penguin Random House, CBS Corp oration’s Simon & Schuster Inc., Lagardère SCA’s Hachette Livre and News Corp ’s HarperCollins Publishers—showed the decade of seeking cover from outside threats is over, but the fight to overcome the lackluster growth it left behind has just begun.

One thing all agree on is the need for speed. Companies are reinvesting in printed books after years of cost-cutting, and they are building pipelines to bring author’s words into readers’ hands faster.

The effort has been spurred on by the success of books that resonate with the political moment such as HarperCollins’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” by J.D. Vance, about rural American culture and Penguin Random House’s “Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green, about former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
more at:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-publishers-go-back-to-basics-1507983856

Related Posts

JCPenney Signs Asset Purchase Agreement with Brookfield, Simon and First Lien Lenders, Charting Course for the Future

J. C. Penney Company, Inc. announced that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Brookfield Asset Management, Inc, Simon Property Group and a majority of the Company’s DIP and First Lien Lenders. Key terms of the APA are as follows: *Brookfield and Simon will acquire substantially all of JCPenney’s retail and operating assets (“OpCo”) through a combination of cash and new term loan debt. *The formation of separate property holding companies (“PropCos”), comprising 160 of the Company’s real estate assets and all of its owned distribution centers, which will be owned by the Company’s DIP and First Lien Lenders. *The OpCo and PropCos will enter into master leases with respect to the properties and distribution centers moved into the PropCos (the “Master Lease Agreement”). JCPenney, Simon and Brookfield, and the Majority Lender Group have reached agreement on all outstanding business points in the Master Lease Agreement.

B&NE Steps Up Fight Against Counterfeiters

In another move to combat the spread of counterfeit textbooks, Cengage, Elsevier, McGraw-Hill Education, and Pearson announced an agreement with Barnes & Noble Education to implement the industry’s Anti-Counterfeit Best Practices. The best practices were developed earlier this year by the Educational Publishers Enforcement Group (EPEG) with the goal of assisting publishers and distributors looking to tamp down on the growing availability of counterfeit print textbooks. In agreeing to adhere to the best practices program, B&NE will verify the sources of its textbooks. It will also inspect inventory that has a high risk of being counterfeit, and prevent it from infecting the rest of its inventory. And, according to the agreement, when B&NE finds counterfeit books it will share information about the title and supplier with publishers. Click Read More below for more of the story.

Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike, a standoff risking new shortages

Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight, and even though progress was reported in talks on Monday, the workers went on strike. The strike affecting 36 ports is the first by the union since 1977. Workers began picketing at the Port of Philadelphia shortly after midnight, walking in a circle at a rail crossing outside the port and chanting “No work without a fair contract.”
Back To Top
×Close search
Search