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Home > Business/Finance > Training and Education > Publishing
Bookselling
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The UK book market is one of the largest in Europe, with strong book sales. Although it is unclear whether these sales are growing faster in the UK than elsewhere in Europe, UK sales figures for 2007 suggest that this might be the case. Key Note estimates that, in 2007, the total UK retail book market (including online sales) was worth £4.4bn, a rise of 4.5% on 2006. In 2007, consumer books accounted for more than two-thirds of the total market
by value.
Despite the good performance of the market, every high-street bookseller comments that the market has been difficult. By this, they mean that competition to sell the highest number of bestsellers is tough, as
high-street bookshops are being undercut on price by supermarkets and online booksellers. Publishers appear to be offering supermarkets and online booksellers the highest discounts on their highest-profile books, allowing lower prices to be offered in these outlets.
In 2007, the successful retailer Borders (UK) Ltd was sold by its US parent because it had made a loss for 2 years running. Both Waterstone's and WH Smith have also struggled in the market, although both companies reported very healthy Christmas sales. Meanwhile, independent booksellers are remaining in the market and the number of these outlets actually appears to be increasing. The independents are adopting a strategy of limited price cuts, plus an enhanced service, and they are also making greater efforts to reach out into their local communities. Even so, some independents did
close in 2007.
The industry's major booksellers include WH Smith, Waterstone's, Amazon.co.uk, Borders, Book Club Associates and Blackwell. Although Amazon.co.uk is forging ahead and increasing its impact on the bookselling market, there are thousands of other online booksellers, some of which began life as high-street booksellers before transferring wholly to Internet sales. Another large bookseller, The Works, went into administration at the beginning of 2008.
Two other developments, which are of fundamental and long-term importance to the industry, are the inexorable growth in online bookselling and the importance of the digitisation of books. Digital books, digital downloads and the printing on demand of out-of-print titles by booksellers is becoming a possibility. The digitisation of books is presenting a major challenge to the bookshops: The Booksellers Association (BA) believes that booksellers and publishers need to work together to devise a strategy to exploit this new technology. The BA argues that both parts of the book trade will suffer unless they collaborate more closely, and many experts and observers of the book trade agree with this conclusion.
Key Note forecasts that the value of retail book sales in the UK will rise by 13.6% between 2008 and 2012. Although more books will be sold, profitability is expected to remain slim.
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