TRENDS 2006 Shows Small Pub Sales More Than Previously Estimated

On Friday, May 19, at BookExpo America in Washington, D.C., the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), announced some of the key findings in its recent study, Book Industry TRENDS 2006. This year's TRENDS takes a "giant step forward," said Angela Bole, BISG's marketing and communications manager, because it now includes extensive primary research with publishers whose annual revenues are under $50 million.

These smaller publishers, Bole said in her opening remarks, "had been under-represented" in previous TRENDS. All told, TRENDS 2006 estimates that total publishers' net revenues in 2005 reached $34.59 billion, an increase of slightly more than 5.9 percent over 2004. Joining Bole on Friday's panel were Jeff Hayes, research director for InfoTrends, and Robert Wharton and Albert Greco, senior researchers at the Institute for Publishing Research.

Hayes was charged with providing BISG with data on smaller publishers, which had been estimated in previous editions of TRENDS. "The traditional focus was on mid- to large-sized publishers, but there had been evidence that smaller publishers had not been counted to the full extent," he said. "There was need for new primary research.... The one thing that struck me was that [publishing] has a large head with a very long tail of [smaller] publishers. This made it difficult to quantify."

InfoTrends research puts projected net revenue for these smaller publishers at $11 billion, of which $6.8 billion was "not previously counted," Hayes reported.

Following Hayes, Greco and Wharton discussed their methodology in conducting their research and then Greco provided attendees with some of TRENDS key findings and predictions:

• In 2005, publishers' net dollar sales were estimated to be just under $37 billion, an increase of 6.1 percent over 2004.
  
  
• TRENDS estimates that adult trade net sales increased 3.9 percent in 2005 to $8.8 billion, and they are projected to increase by 2.6 percent in 2006, and 2.7 percent in 2007.
  
  
• One of the biggest growth categories is religion, where "an unbelievable number of books" have been sold, Greco said. The religion category saw net dollar sales increase by an estimated 8.1 percent over 2004 to $2.3 billion, and sales are expected to increase by 6.5 percent in 2006 and 6.3 percent in 2007.
  
  
• Mass market sold an estimated $1.8 billion in 2005, a 2.7 percent increase over 2004.
  
  
• The ELHI market sold an estimated $4.7 billion in 2005, a whopping increase of 15.5 percent over 2004, though BISG estimates that growth will fall to 3.5 percent this year and then jump to 7.0 percent in 2007. These numbers do not include standardized tests, which grew by 10.1 percent in 2005 to $2.3 billion in net dollar sales. --David Grogan