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P.o.d. pushes books to new high

19.03.08 Tom Tivnan

The number of books published in the UK skyrocketed to the highest level ever last year, driven by an increase in print-on-demand titles.

According to Nielsen BookScan, the number of frontlist titles (books with both an ISBN and a 2007 publication date) sold last year hit 118,602, up 36% from 2006 (86,984). The amount of backlist titles (books with a pre-2007 publication date) sold last year also dramatically increased, up to 758,125 from 590,464 in 2006, a jump of 28%.

André Breedt, Nielsen BookScan research and development analyst, said: "There have been more frontlist titles sold and more individual titles sold than ever before. What we are really beginning to see is the effect of books never going out of print with print on demand."

Breedt said the stark rise was also down to more retailers reporting sales, while publishers are classifying books better and assigning ISBNs to products such as maps for the first time. The 2007 frontlist number is almost double the figure in 2004 (63,695), while the 883,725 titles sold overall in 2007 is a 59% leap from 2004 (553,306).

"What you see here is a reflection of a vibrant and healthy society," said Bloomsbury m.d. Richard Charkin. "The principle is that it is simply getting cheaper to publish, but more costly to market to the high street."

Penguin UK c.e.o. Peter Field agreed. "If there are 120,000 books published, so many of them are p.o.d. or academic monographs, which just won’t make it to the high street. For trade publishers, we each make decisions to publish based on what we can market and sell into the trade."

Duncan Enright, Elsevier's UK publishing director, said he was not surprised by the rise in p.o.d. He added: "Print costs are historically low and p.o.d. is so much easier to produce. If all these books are doing good things for the readers, then I don’t think it is a bad thing. I would say that Elsevier itself is not publishing significantly more, we’re just making the books available in slightly different formats."

 

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