The latest publishing trade figures make for alarming reading. Tuesday’s edition of the Bookseller reported that this January was the second worst on record for retail. The print business is wasting away at the rate that gangrene spreads. Hachette UK’s revenue in the 4th quarter of 2011 was down by 4.5 per cent on the previous year; at the same time, the company’s eBook sales are up 500 per cent on 2010.
The new data suggests that the much threatened digital future is finally here. The Bookseller reports that digital sales now comprise 25 per cent of Gardeners’s wholesale business. Menawhile, Harper Collins says that digital sales now account for 20 per cent of its UK business; and a spokesmen from its parent company, News Corp, says that the publisher is performing well as the group recoils from poor advertising revenue and the News of the World saga, which has hit operating income by 43 per cent. And Bertlesmann, which owns Random House, says that its digital sales are “rapidly growing”; the Bookseller adds that the company’s revenues have marginally increased by £200 million on last year, although the company is expected to make a loss on last year.
Plainly, investment now has to come in eBook readers and digital publishing, so that publishers and retailers can withstand the contraction of the print market, and challenge Amazon’s dominance. Rumour has it that Barnes & Noble and Waterstones draw ever closer to a formal agreement over sharing and developing the Nook tablet. Publishers are said to have been privy to those discussions, as they were with Apple’s recent foray into education publishing. But, needless to say, it remains a bleak market: the 500 per cent increase in Hachette UK’s digital sales only netted the company a total of £21m last year, just 20 per cent of its overall business.
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