You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Sales of books in France fell by 1.5% in 2010 or 0.5% without taking account of book price inflation, according to French weekly Livres Hebdo’s indicators.
After three years of increase, the decline came as retailing in general recovered from its downturn with an annual increase in sales of 0.9% excluding inflation. Figures from the national statistics office INSEE show that book prices rose by 1.7% last year, against 0.3% in 2009.
But the book sales figures could be bleaker, as 2010 ended better than it started. Apart from a rise of 1% in May, sales slumped by 7% in January and continued to drop during the first seven months of the year. They picked up to 4.5% in September, ending the year flat in December.
Export sales continued to fuel the market, even though the increase was smaller than in previous years. It came in at 5.5% excluding inflation in 2010, against 10.5% in 2009 and 14% in 2008.
For a second year the number of new titles and new editions slipped, down by 1% from 2009 to 63,052 in 2010. Output expanded strongly in some sectors, with medical titles increasing by 10%, paramedical by 27% and agronomics by 27%.