North American Book Market
Copyright 2008 by Morris Rosenthal - All Rights Reserved
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North American Book MarketCopyright 2008 by Morris Rosenthal - All Rights Reserved |
Starting a Self Publishing Company
Copyright 2008 by Morris Rosenthal All Rights Reserved |
US Sales for Amazon, BN.com, Barnes&Noble and Dalton, Borders and Waldenbooks - 2008 Update in progress.The following current year information about book industry sales is taken from the annual reports, SEC filings and company press releases for the year 2007 (in progress, final numbers from B&N and Borders due in April 2008) from Barnes&Noble, Borders, Amazon.com, and BN.com. International sales numbers for Borders and Amazon not included.
Growth picked up for booksellers in 2007, and overall book sales rose slightly according the the government (table below).The combined total for media sales (mainly books) of the Barnes&Noble and Borders chains plus Amazon and BN.com was $13.59 billion. Barnes and Noble, in their 2006 conference call, pointed out that "most" of their business is in stable backlist sales, and their most valuable asset is their real estate. These sums include a couple billion dollars worth of DVD's, CD's, coffee and brownies that aren't publicly broken out of the numbers. The $16.8 billion estimated by the US Census Bureau also includes the other non-book goods sold by those retailers, but doesn't include Amazon and other mail-order sellers.. The $16.8 billion figure is a good $10 billion lower than total book sales estimates from various industry surveys, but those surveys include both mass merchandisers, such as Walmarts and supermarkets, where a relatively limited selection of titles are sold, the Elhi (Elementary through High School) market for textbooks, which accounts for approximately $5 billion in sales per year, and bookclubs. With specialty religion bookshops accounting for at least another billion in sales a year, and several billion dollars in professional books being sold through nontraditional channels, it's apparent that there isn't a huge slice of pie left over for the general indy booksellers by anybody's math. Within the Barnes&Noble and Borders chains, book sales are falling at their small stores (B. Dalton and Waldenbooks) which are being shut down and replaced with superstores. In 2005, Amazon bought BookSurge LLC, an aggressive POD company whose performance had hitherto been limited by their lack of access to Amazon. They don't break out Booksurge in their annual report, but Booksurge published 3,980 titles in 2006 and is up past 10,000 titles overall. Amazon stopped selling ebooks through their International sites in 2005 and dropped the Lightning Source ebooks that made up most of their North American ebook sales in 2006. Google announced they would start selling ebooks in 2006 but never did. Borders International sales, not included above, were over a half a billion dollars - Amazon's international media sales, also not included above, were nearly $3.5 billion dollars, just a couple percent below their North America sales and larger than Borders North American sales. In 2008, Borders reported a loss and announced they are trying to sell their international operations and may sell the whole chain.
Amazon failed to grow sales through third party sellers for the second stright year in 2007, including those individuals and businesses selling through Amazon Marketplace, Merchants and other programs. Third party sales accounted for 28% of Amazon's total unit sales in 2007, no change from 2005, but still more than one in 4 items sold. If you assume that the majority of the third party item sales are books, and that the non-book media vs book ratio continues around 1:2, this would imply that about 1 in 3 books sold at Amazon are actually sold by a third party without even taking the other Amazon merchandise into account. That other merchandise accounts for almost two out of five of Amazon's sales dollars, but probably at a lower item count than books and media due to the higher pricing of items such as electronics, jewlery and automobiles:-)
Included in survey: 4512111 Book Stores, General Establishments primarily engaged in retailing a general line of new books. These establishments may also sell stationery and related items, second-hand books, and magazines. 4512112 Specialty Book Stores Establishments primarily engaged in retailing specialty books, such as general reference, religious, and professional books. 4512113 College Book Stores Establishments primarily engaged in retailing textbooks, generally on the college level. Most of these establishments are located on or near college campuses, and some sell more apparel than books. These establishments may also offer second-hand textbooks. School book stores, other than college, are included in this industry. "Print-on-Demand Book Publishing" is $14.95 through Amazon or the publisher |
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