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WBN titles receive major sales boost
21.03.11 | Philip Stone
Sales of the 25 titles given away as freebies on World Book Night continue to confound the critics, as the public snap up the selections at three times the rate in March this year as they did last year, on average.
In total, the 25 World Book Night titles have sold 58,100 copies thus far in March, with the average year-on-year sales increase for each title measuring 205%. Approximately £78,000 more has been spent on the books over the past two weeks than in the comparative weeks last year.
It is now estimated that the World Book Night event has provided the 25 titles with approximately 75,000 extra sales in 2011, or £450,000 in value terms, but these figures do not include any sales boosts received for backlist titles by the chosen authors.
Similarly, the figures do not include any add-on sales enjoyed by other non-World Book Night books that shoppers might have been persuaded to buy simultaneously in order to take advantage of booksellers' money-off promotions.
Helped by recent celebrity plugs on BBC2's "My Life in Books" series, David Nicholls' One Day (Hodder) and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (Faber) are the current favourites with the book-buying public, while Seamus Heaney's New Selected Poems (Faber) is currently enjoying the biggest proportional benefit of being one of the chosen 25. Its sales for the first two weeks of March this year are up 730% on March 2010 when it sold just 106 copies.
Since the beginning of the year, sales of each of the 25 books have increased by 172% on average—a significantly stronger performance than the wider market which has experienced a sales slump of 9% in volume terms.
The only book to have seen its sales fall since the first week of 2011 is TV chef Nigel Slater's memoir, Toast (Fourth Estate), as the book experienced a huge sales boost in December/January thanks to its BBC TV adaptation. In fact, its sales have jumped 65% over the past fortnight, and last week were up 196% year on year.
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"It is now estimated that the World Book Night event has provided each of the 25 titles with approximately 75,000 extra sales in 2011, or £450,000 in value terms"
HUH? Who has estimated this and how did they do so. If each of 25 titles had 75,000 extra sales that would be 1,875,000 extra sales. How many extra sales have they achieved so far?
A publisher of my acquaintance has sold 80 extra copies of their title - which is by a living,very high=profile author. I think someone needs to check their figures again before Master Byng's head does not go through the door into Buckingham Palace en route to receive his K.
Hi Anon, the estimates were put together by our charts editor Philip Stone, based on Nielsen BookScan data. The data is based on the average sales increases enjoyed by all 25 titles on a month/month and year/year basis, taking into account overall book sales growths/declines in 2011 versus 2010, average annual year/year sales declines experienced by backlist titles, and 2010 publication dates skewing some figures (One Day in particular).
In the midst of these figures about increased sales of WBN titles has anybody noticed that sales for the week ending March 12th are down 15.6% on the same week last year. That's quite a drop and the weather can't be blamed this time. Why buy books when there are a million free copies available? So much for helping book sales to increase !
Exactly, Independent Bookseller. Any figures for a few promoted titles are worthless without considering the wider context of the TCM.
What a hopelessly short-sighted attitude shown by Independent Bookseller. This was a long term project, not a three week project. The success of WBN will be judged on the effect it has on bookselling over a period of months and years. To start with these figures are encouraging and a significant amount of 'casual' readers have mentioned the night, television programmes and books to me over the past few weeks. So in terms of initial sales and exposure for books to a wider audience, WBN has been good for the trade.
It is high time people in this industry started thinking a bit more long term.
Hi Graeme
Huh again? I'd love to see the maths. And that 450,000 volume figure is what, per title or total? If it is per title that extrapolates to an 11 million pound increase in sales volume for those 25 titles. If 450,000 is the total, that means that each book (1,875,000 units) sold for 24 pence. Either way the numbers don't make sense. I'm all for selling more books, but being a numbers guy I find the numbers the Bookseller is quoting to be more hype than hope.
As a "numbers" guy surely you should know how to differentiate between volume and value?
So I have to wait months or years to see an increase in sales. Great!
Sorry number two you're correct; I used the term volume once when I should have used value, that's why I'm a numbers guy not an editorial guy! My point remains.
Quite, AB. "WBN has been good for the trade" because there was some high profile media coverage. That is good agreed, but you shoot yourself in the foot with a dodgy argument that short term sales equate to long ternm success - it may do, it may not, let's hope it does but nothing to date suggests it will.
The £450,000 is the total value sales figure so far this year, as has been pointed out elsewhere. The figures strike me as conceivable - BookScan's panel of booksellers number 6,500, which means each bookshop has sold one extra copy of one of the books from the 25 each week this year. And to reiterate, these figures are based on research our charts editor carried out rather than figures WBN gave us. So we're not hyping anything here.
So let me get this right,I am a bit dim today.
Each title sold 75,000 extra copies giving 1,875,000 extra sales in total?
These extra 1,875,000 sales resulted in £450,000 extra revenue?
So,each book sold for 24p and each of the 6,500 booksellers on the panel made an extra £69.23 turnover?
If this is all correct then the numbers do indeed not stack up.
Even more so when compared to: "BookScan's panel of booksellers number 6,500, which means each bookshop has sold one extra copy of one of the books from the 25 each week this year"
This would mean sales of 25x6500x13=2,112,500 for a revenue of £450,000 and a asp of 21p/book.
The spin around WBN is making me dizzy!
No wonder the figures don't add up: they're based on Anonymous' misquotation from the article. Philip Stone wrote that "the World Book Night event has provided the 25 titles with approximately 75,000 extra sales". Anon quoted him as writing: "the World Book Night event has provided each of the 25 titles with approximately 75,000 extra sales".
I was a book giver on WBN, giving away Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. Based on some of the readings I heard, I have since gone and purchased:- One Day by David Nichols; The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and two books by Alan Bennett, who I would never had read before. Therefore I think WBN did a great thing for booksales, as if I bought 4 books, how many other people bought books too?
Lisa H - nobody, apparently. It's really, really, really simple. 1,000,000 books were given away a couple of weeks ago. Book sales go down.
I love the fact that the BBC have to choose 25 books to be sold. It's so typically pompus of the establishment.
You should be able to give away a book of your choice that you love. Or is the general public too stupid to know what it likes?
You're either in the elite club or you're not, I guess? Maybe it's all about back-handers and back-stratching? I do hope other authors and lesser-known titles benefit from increased awareness of reading, but I doubt it.
You can't have it both ways. If this is indeed a long term project it won't do to make intermediate judgements based on short term results.
It's not short sighted to question the veracity of the figures. If we can't look at the stats in a rational way now, we'll hardly be in a position to critically judge the project in the long term.
I agree with the critics - those of us who gave books away thnking we were helping boost readership have been conned. The long term project is boosting the sales of big business and high profile authors. The BBC asked Sarah Walters and Mark Billingham what they would have chosen on a free choice, answers were Sherlock Holmes and Jane Eyre. But the Arts Editor pointed out these were out of copyright so would not be eligible. Only those books by high profile authors where money could be made would be given out.
The project is clearly designed to help big living authors and big bookseling chains. The independent booksellers are right to fear they will be damaged by WBN. Indeed, it could be argued the WBN is designed to drive them out. I also found from local independent writers, who seem to have been ignored, great bitterness. Rightly so, as the only poeple who got the big publicity were the big names.
We have been conned. If the people running WBN really want to avoid the criticism of cynical manipulation, open the choice of books to a democratic vote of givers, include books that are out of copyright, and do something to help independent booksellers and small not well publicised authors. Otherwise the scheme is a scam and people like me who volunteered to hand out books have been taken for a ride.
Trevor Fisher
But he was not corrected by GraemeNeill so it is reasonable to conclude that he was correct.
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