Hey, I'm wondering what's going on in the publishing industry with this tanked economy. Is publishing struggling as much as the rest of this great nation, or has the slump made more people want to check out of life with a good book? How are the LDS publishers doing? Main stream publishers? Just wondering.
Yes, publishing is struggling. How much, I don't know for sure.
Professionally, I am seeing fewer titles published by smaller presses and new releases held back. The bigger publishers seem to be doing about the same. In the LDS arena, I've seen accepted manuscripts and scheduled releases dropped, and series release dates pushed into the future. But then, I've also seen lots of new authors picked up and some series have added titles beyond their original scope. So it's hard to tell and publishers generally aren't forthcoming about the true state of affairs with their company. It would damage their sales to say they were struggling.
Personally, like most other bookaholics I know, I've had to put myself on a book diet. I buy fewer titles now and get a lot more from the library. Which totally stinks, but...
Publishers? Authors? Readers? Want to chime in on this?
5 comments:
The Association of American Publishers said book sales increased 6.9 percent since the beginning of the year. Compared to an increase of 5.4 percent in the Gross National Product for the first two quarters, publishers are doing okay.
Ebook sales increased to 9 percent of the market, compared to 3.3 percent at the same time last year.
I'm just a person but I know we are buying a lot less books in our family. Instead, we're going to the library more and asking for books as Christmas presents.
I've still heard of plenty of sales, debut novels, and author-agent hookups, so I'd have to go with NOT DYING. In fact, I think it might be doing better than many other industries during the recession (which I guess is officially over or something). :)
Publishing has always been competitive, and I think that feeds the doomsayers, but good literature is still finding its way into the hands of hungry readers. That's something to be glad about.
(I'm an aspiring author and a book blogger, so that affects my perspective of publishing.)
I was subsisting on library fare long before the recession hit. What books I buy are usually for my kids if they ask for something specific. I don't buy anything for myself unless I reeeeeeeeallly have to have it.
On the LDS side, Cedar Fort continues to push out fiction titles every month, many by first-time authors (including mine in December). However, if you look at their bestseller list, it's clear that non-fiction titles constitute the vast bulk of their sales.
http://michaelknudsenauthor.com
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