BISG in the News

Adult Trade Fared Well--

In Contrast to Most Everything Else

By Michael Cader (Publishers Lunch) -- Lunch is late since this morning we attended the presentation of the Book Industry Study Group's (BISG) summary results from its annual statistical overview of the entire book business, BOOK INDUSTRY TRENDS, which is now available for sale as well.

Before getting to our own presentation and analysis of the results, we should start by acknowledging the great strides that BISG has made in the past couple of years under the direction of Jeff Abraham. What was once a financially-challenged organization with a limited agenda and constituency has rather dramatically turned itself into an energetic association that provides the only neutral haven where members of every major constituency of the book business sit together working to study and improve the underpinnings of the industry. Book publishing's major physical and online retailers now sit side-by-side with publishers large and small. The organization's historical focus on standards has become ever-more crucial with the coming of the 13-digit ISBN and the growing importance of "under-the-hood" data like ONIX feeds and BISAC codes in driving the ever-more transparent world of online bookselling and research.

As a result, the group is now able to embark on important new efforts like the first-ever rigorous study of the online used book market, for which they have secured promises of data from all the major players.

Efforts have been made in the past couple of years to upgrade the annual TRENDS data as well, after a disastrous anomaly in the 2002 report that required a subsequent restatement of much of the data--but we're left believing this is another area in which BISG can take its new inspiration and energy and drive towards a more illuminating product.

This year's top-level data presents at least one more positive sign than usual. While unit sales for the overall general trade book market continue to decline, down to 944 million units overall from 965 million units last year, adult trade rose nicely, driven by strong hardcover sales. Publishers' dollars of $5.02 billion were up 4.8 percent; and adult unit sales rose 3.1 percent. That's not flat.

But poor juvenile book results--which account for fewer dollars, but more than half of all trade units--dragged down the overall totals. Publishers' sales of $1.77 billion were down 7.3 percent, and units fell 6.7 percent, to 480 million.

Religious book sales were the other big gainer, rising 11 percent, to $1.95 billion, helped by a rise in unit sales of 8.5 percent, to 221 million units.

But mass-market sales continued to fall (by 1.7 percent in dollars, and 4.8 percent in units); book club sales fell (5.5 percent in dollars; 7.6 percent in units) university presses slid (2.3 percent in dollars; 4.5 percent in units); el-hi sales were down slightly; and college textbooks were mixed (up slightly in dollars but down 1.7 percent in units).

With the weak spots dominating, overall units for the entire industry were 2.295 billion, continuing a five-year downward trend since 1999, as publishers' dollar sales rose to $28.58 billion.

The most disturbing trend cited by Fordham University's Al Greco was "the emergence of companies buying and selling used books" in the el-hi market, following the trend that is estimated to have already taken over $2 billion a year out of the market for new college textbooks. Greco also cited a Veronis Suhler estimate that projects a sharp and continuing decline in hours spent reading traditional print products regularly by consumers over the next five years.

Half of TRENDS (and often more than half of the attention) is focused on the "projections" for the next five years, but it's here that the study generally crosses over from what we book people call nonfiction over to fiction. While we understand and fully respect that the Fordham professors who prepare this data are experts at statistical projections and we have no formal training in this area, every year we face the same conundrum without a satisfactory answer: each year's new data proves the previous year's projections wrong, and if you can't get the next year forward right, how can five years' worth of guesses have any utility at all?

Greco was pleased that their total market projection for 2004 was indeed quite accurate--but that's only because nearly every single component was so off that they eventually balanced each other out. The prediction for adult trade dollars was very close--but nothing else was, even on the basic trend lines. Juvenile was supposed to rise 10.6 (it dropped 7.3); mass market was supposed to be up 1.8 (it was down 1.7 percent); religious books were due to rise 1.6 percent (they rose 11 percent); college was forecast to rise 2.9 percent (it was up 1 percent); el-hi was supposed to be up 2.9 percent (it fell 0.1%). If you planned your business based on these projections, you were in trouble.

Our humble suggestion is that, as the BISG moves to integrate their "under the radar" information and used book data into the larger statistical picture of the industry, that they let go of throwing darts at the future and encourage the statisticians to "show their work" that frames their guesses, and move towards new measures (market share data; better book segment data; and so on--manga is currently not reflected at all; audio is not broken out, etc.) that might have greater utility and shed more light. There's a lot of deep knowledge and study embedded in the work that leads to the projections; far deeper, we suspect, than the projections themselves.

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