The Bookseller.com

21st November 2008

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Leaf, surf or both?

20.02.08 Liz Bury

The rise of free information on the internet is matched by a rising an­xiety within book circles. As more material becomes available for free, will people still want, and be prepared to pay for, books?

Home reference is singled out as the most vulnerable category. Why buy a parenting book when www.mumsnet.com offers advice for free? Or a cookery book when recipes for every conceivable dish are available online, gratis? Or shell out for a dictionary when you can check a word on any number of free online dic­tionaries or encyclopedias?

And yet the feared step into the abyss doesn't quite appear to have ­happened so far, according to figures from Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market. The trend of annual figures for the past seven years shows that most non-fiction ­categories are on an upward curve. Of the 21 BookScan categories that might loosely be considered to refer to consumer reference, only two have shown a decline in sales since 2001: they are computing and IT, and mind, body and spirit. The rest are positively buoyant.

To an extent the growth figures in the table (click image below to download the table in PDF format) reflect the expansion of BookScan's retail panel over time, as well as underlying growth in the book sector overall. Nevertheless, the remaining categories all record double-digit growth. Is it possible that internet enthusiasts—who claim the more material that is available free online, the more accessible, visible and ultimately desirable books become—have been right all along?

 

 

 

 

Recipes with personality

Gary June, Dorling Kindersley c.e.o., remains cautious about prospects for certain types of publishing. "There is definitely a threat on shorter, topical non-fiction and shorter, topical illustrated non-fiction. Generic titles are out, a design or ­format-driven approach is a necessity."­ But consumer reference still fires the engines at DK. "We have seen no decline in core, longer reference books about topics with ­global appeal. Our sales in the US, for example, have risen 6% for three years running."

At HarperCollins, Denise Bates, Collins publishing director, says much the same thing about the effect of free online material on book sales being patchy. "I wouldn't say the threat is over-hyped—it's significant, but only in certain areas. Cookery, for example, is robust. There's a distinction between straight information with no opinion and then the various ways in which it might be delivered. With cookery, you're buying into a personality, a bit of that magic, and a lovely object that goes beyond the basic reference."

She continues: "You can go online and find 50 recipes for mayonnaise, but it's not about that. Whose do you want? You want it to be enjoyable."

Richard Humphries, Borders head of non-fiction, says he has looked up a recipe online, (tomato risotto, in case you're wondering), but he believes that the effect of free online content on book sales is, in many categories, "negligible". "If people want a specific recipe they will look it up, but if they want a book, they'll buy a book." Many cooks obviously agree, and their purchases have helped to expand sales of titles grouped in BookScan's food and drink product class by 17% from £66m in 2006 to £77.3m in 2007.

However, this picture of the market becomes a little more complex on closer examination of the figures underneath the topline. Of the seven sub-categories that make up the product class of food and drink, three are in decline year on year: health, dieting and wholefood cookery; vegetarian cookery; and wines. Does this reflect a softening that can be attributed to free information online, or is it a change in consumer tastes that might have happened anyway?

"With diet books, it's very difficult to answer with any degree of accuracy," Bates says. "Diet sales are not as strong as they were. There is a lot of online competition from community sites—places where you can go if you fall off the wagon and have a piece of chocolate cake. I'm sure they are taking over from diet books, but then there hasn't been a really big trend since Atkins and GI. It could be that when the next big thing comes along, everyone will flock back to books." Sales of health, dieting and wholefood cookery fell year on year by 26.2% from £4.3m in 2006 to £3.2m in 2007.

Humphries suggests that with health, and also perhaps do-it-yourself books, the need for a specific piece of information could mean that general reference works are upstaged by online material more easily. "With health or DIY it's more specific. In my case: ‘How do I put up this shelf straight?'," he says.

However, even in genres where sales are down, individual titles can be surprisingly resilient. Calorie Counter, part of Collins' Gem range, continues to be a perennially strong seller. Bates says: "Obviously, there are any number of online calorie counters but it continues to sell strongly. It's still a very convenient way of delivering that information, and for the price of a cappuccino you can slip it in your handbag and take it everywhere. There is still no other means of delivery that beats that."

On the topic of home reference sales, a Waterstone's spokeswoman will say only that "the internet offers as many opportunities as it does threats. Of course it has affected the way people buy and use certain types of material". No one from Amazon.co.uk was available for comment.

At HarperCollins, Bates says the type of information available online has changed the kind of books it publishes.­

"In history, the category isn't shrinking, but our publishing is changing," she says. "We used to publish a series of historical atlases with the Times. At the top end, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, priced at £150, has held up well. But the rest of our history is now more narrative, more personal."

For home reference, which she adds is "not particularly homogenous, if you think it covers cookery, gardening, health and so on", Harper­Collins is more likely to ­create community websites around its publishing, than to develop electronic products, she says. "In natural history we have a good sense of who our readers are and what they want." HarperCollins will in April launch a natural history website with a strong forum element that may also generate content. "Books can coexist happily with the internet," Bates says.

Flat but not out

HarperCollins also has a large output of what Bates describes as "flat reference", or books with no author personality or narrative element. This type of publishing is "at the forefront" of the digital revolution, she says, and these lists are finding ways to derive revenue from online content. The Mission Praise series of hymn books, for example, has spawned website www.missionpraise.com, selling audio recordings of the hymns and suggesting play­lists. "Bibles and atlases are at the forefront online, because they are not author-led."

DK has recently brought out Eyewitness Interactive, at www.eyewitness.dk.com, an online learning resource aimed at the schools market; it has introduced http://traveldk.com, where consumers can slice and dice material to create their own guide book, to use either in digi­tal or print form; and it is licensing electronic content to third parties such as mobile phone providers.

Sales of travel and holiday guides, one of nine sub-categories in Book­Scan's atlases, maps and travel product class, rose 2.5% year on year, from £55.1m in 2006 to £56.4m in 2007. The product class overall is on an upward trend over the long term, although sales had fallen steadily from a high of £105.3m in 2004 until last year's market picked up again, rising by 1.4% from £102.4m in 2006 to £103.8m in 2007. However, it's worth noting that growth in both the product class of atlases, maps and travel, and its sub-category, travel and holiday guides, fell below the level of total gains in the TCM of 6.2% last year (to £1.8bn).

Never stand still

Humphries also cites dictionaries­ and reference, another product class that fits Bates' "flat reference" label, as evidence that "the figures bear out" a hypothesis that threats to sales from free online content may be over-hyped. To take the year-on-year view, the dictionaries and reference product class increased sales by 6.7% from £23.4m in 2006 to £25m in 2007. "At Borders, the figures were a lot better than that," Humphries adds. "It is being driven by high street and internet retailing."

However, like atlases, maps and travel, the dictionaries and reference product class has fallen from a high in 2004 (in this case, £28.5m). And it is not alone. Of the other 17, loosely home reference-linked product classes that are in growth over seven years, five are in decline since 2004: leisure and lifestyle; language and linguistics; the world, ideas and culture; philosophy and psychology; and family, health and relationships.

At DK, June believes that "fact-based list books", those without ­visuals, will become more vulnerable and, "when a consumer platform is established", practical how-to books may also follow a downward curve.

Waterstone's is alert to the danger: "We are used to working in a changing market and we are always examining what people want from our stores and internet service, and how we can improve our offer to them," a spokeswoman says.

At DK, June makes the case for a specific strategy: "Longer term, you must have a digital strategy as there is no telling where technology and societal shifts will end up."

Retail Flagship Feature Liz Bury digital