Meyer sales help drag children's market up 8%
23.07.09 | Caroline Horn
The children's books' market rose by 8% in the first half of 2009, but only thanks to healthy Stephenie Meyer sales, with publishers expressing concern that “backlist attrition” is leading to a limited range of books available through high street booksellers.
Figures from Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market show that children's retail sales were £127m for the 24 weeks to 13th June compared with £117.8m over the equivalent period last year. Once Meyer's £11m sales from her young-adult titles are stripped out, however, the children's market shows a decline of 1.1%, to £116m; the book market as a whole dropped by 1.3% over this period.
The first half of the year has seen some significant swings in sales for individual publishing houses. Meyer's publisher, Little, Brown, contributed to an 88.7% rise in sales for Hachette's children's group, taking sales to £24.2m compared with £12.8m in 2008. Meanwhile, Scholastic has seen a 21.7% fall in sales to £4.6m (£5.9m) while Random House Children's Books also saw an 8.9% fall on its 2008 figures to £8.2m (£9m).
Elsewhere, the changes have been more modest. Macmillan and Penguin both saw slight rises in the value of their sales, including a 2.3% uplift for Macmillan to £6.9m and a 0.9% increase for Penguin children's sales to £16.4m, while Egmont and HarperCollins saw falls of 3% and 4.5% respectively, taking their sales to £8.7m and £8.6m.
Independent publishers have held their own. Usborne enjoyed a 15.5% rise in sales to £5.3m while Walker saw a 0.5% increase to £4m.
Hachette Children's Group managing director Marlene Johnson said that the economic
climate was only partly responsible for the decline in children's book sales, pointing to an increasingly limited range on the high street. Johnson said: “The big brands continue to perform and people who can't make it will be destocked. Backlist attrition is a real problem. Choice will become more and more limited, and that is not going to get any easier next year.”
Comments on this article
By Bert
These numbers are not like for like though - I seem to remember Woolworths having a considerable amount of kids books in their range...23 Jul 09 14:27
By Ross
You may well be right for all I know but in the interest of clarity please explain which numbers, precisely, aren't "like for like". Then we might get some idea of what what wool is being pulled over eyes and be able to deal with it.23 Jul 09 14:47
By Different Planet
Sounds like the ongoing carousel of always blaming someone else but yourself. Publisher blame retailers, retailers blame footfall on the high street etc etc. I suspect that the content of this article could have been written at any time during the last 20 years and publishers would always said retailers were de-stocking...23 Jul 09 15:03
By Robert Muchamore
With retailers vanishing and one mega brand distorting the market I think it's impossible to read and meaningful long term trends into these numbers.23 Jul 09 15:22
By Ex-Woolies
Having worked in a large branch of Woolworths, I think Bert is rather deluded as to how many children's books we stocked/sold. Bar annuals, at Christmas time, which we sold ten for a penny, our coverage was limited. Regardless, once hopes that any children's books buyers loyal to Woolworths (of all places) shopped elsewhere after our demise. In any case, I can't imagine the demise of Woolies would alter the figures too much. If Sainsbury's stop selling chocolate, people will go elsewhere to buy it.23 Jul 09 16:06
By Janice Patterson
Robert, perhaps you are right, but I'm glad the journalist here has usefully stripped out Meyer's influence from the figures nonetheless, in the hope of giving her readers a better understanding of the market. People don't get praise enough these days, so I, for one, applaud the enterprising journalist here.23 Jul 09 16:11
By Ross
I agree with that - praise is due here, but it's ridiculous to give praise when it's not due, even though people may not get enough of it these days. Apart from anything else, it devalues the currency.23 Jul 09 16:43
By Robert Muchamore
Addressing Janice Patterson's comment: Stripping Stephanie Meyer out of the figures is an interesting exercise BUT if her books didn't exist a proportion of her sales would have gone to other publishers and YA authors. So, either with Meyer or without, her books still distort the underlying market trend.24 Jul 09 08:02
By Janice Patterson
Robert, I agree. In which case we should read from the above article that the children's books market is perhaps in moderate growth. Somewhere between the -1.1% without Meyer and the 8% with her. But there are so many other intangibles within the market - children's books being bought by adults, adult book being bought by children. The tiniest thing can influence the figures. But BookScan stats are the best thing the UK book trade has—and its an incredibly comprehensive system of book sales recording/publishing that no other country in the world has (to standard). Without it, we (as publishers and authors and booksellers) would know almost nothing. Maybe we can't read "long term trends" into the figures. But we should try.24 Jul 09 09:04
