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Sales of cheaply priced classics are surging, with publisher Wordsworth Editions seeing sales of its £1.99 titles leap by as much as 232% year on year. The boost was attributed in part to the recession tightening customers' budgets.
According to Nielsen BookScan TCM figures, spending on all printed novels is down approximately 10%, or £35m, year on year. However, Wordsworth's sales are up 10.9% year on year (to £966,500), due largely to a growth of 18%, (to £688,000) in sales of its fiction titles.
The £1.99 Wordsworth Edition of The Great Gatsby has seen its sales surge by 232% year on year, to 11,550 copies sold. In comparison, the Penguin £7.99 edition was up by only 15.4%, to 3,328 copies sold. Similarly, the £1.99 Wordsworth Edition of Jane Eyre has seen sales growth of 59.5% year on year, compared to Penguin's £6.99 edition, which saw just a 23.7% boost.
Meanwhile, HarperPress titles, priced £2.50, such as Wuthering Heights and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes have sold 5,481 copies and 5,222 copies respectively. Both titles have seen sharp sales uplifts this year.
Wordsworth Editions director, Derek Wright, said: "When we started the £1 book, it was coming in the middle of a recession. In the current climate, people are tending towards having a quiet night in with a book for entertainment, because it costs less than going out."
He added: "We are also being helped by digital—not everybody can afford to spend money on a Kindle in these times, when they can pick up a classic book like ours for good money."
He said Amazon gives them a "good shop window", adding: "A lot of the major bookshops don't stock our titles because of our pricing." Wright said the publisher also plans to release 50 of its 480 titles as e-books, priced at £1.49.
However, Penguin Classics publisher Adam Freudenheim countered that the imprint was also enjoying a sales boost, but across a wider range of editions. Freudenheim said: "The market with classics remains complicated, as always. It's a healthy market, and the competition is only evidence of the strength of the market. There is more interest from the customers and from the retailers, who are giving it more space."
He added that the publisher was seeing "a lot of growth" through its cloth-bound hardbacks, priced £14.99, which appeal to customers who want a collectible edition.
Vintage Classics editorial director Laura Hassan reported a rise of 4% through the TCM for its public domain titles year on year. She said: "These results show beautifully designed books, published by a trusted brand, will always be desirable to customers."
Jasper Sutcliffe, senior buyer at Foyles, said the number of nicely bound editions had increased. "We've definitely seen a growth in that market, with people interested in buying something that isn't throwaway. I suppose there is a pressure on the middle ground," he said.
Sutcliffe added: "We do sell the cheap ones too. We try not to cannibalise the sales of the Vintage, Penguin and OUP Classics too much. It is recessionary times, and we have to cater to every area of the market."