The latest set of industry figures from the Association of American Publishers (AAP—thanks as always to Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives for reporting the reports) is no more definitive than any other and comes with all the regular caveats about not covering large parts of the market, such as ebooks with no ISBN. But it remains of interest.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The headline is that in June, overall sales were down more than 1 percent, but digital audio sales continued their incredibly strong growth, up 16.9 percent year on year. The really interesting set of figures is that in June, digital audio sales surpassed ebooks ($88 million to $86 million). But at around $500 million each, when it comes to year-to-date sales, ebooks remain just ahead (of course, we know ebook revenue is vastly underreported here). The driver of the downward trend is print, with paperbacks down 6.8 percent.
Barnes & Noble and Indie Stores
All of this might seem gloomy reading for those of us who do a lot of our business in print. But my attention was caught by a piece on LitHub that looked at Barnes & Noble’s recent acquisition of the indie book chain Books Inc. I had noticed the story in several places, but the LitHub piece seemed to have a more general angle that made it worth relaying here. They noted that Barnes & Noble, under James Daunt, are seemingly doubling down on support for the indie bookstore sector.
The giant chain promised to keep the branding of the smaller one along with its loyalty schemes. This is something Daunt previously did with indie stores affiliated to Waterstones in the UK (where he attracted criticism for stealth). It is shrewd marketing. But it’s also encouraging.
Webtoon and Disney Plus
One part of our world that seems to fall through the cracks in many reports is the comic and graphic novel sector. Yet one only has to walk through a regular town to know that this is a sector that is in really good health, with dedicated stores and increased shelf space seemingly popping up everywhere, backed by increased public exposure through streaming video and streaming comic services.
It’s also an area where indies have incredibly easy access to platforms for distributing our work to a wide readership, such as Webtoon.
Which brings me to the final story: a new deal between Disney Plus and Webtoon. It will see the creation of a new platform that will host electronic versions of all the 35,000 comics to which Disney has the rights, including Marvel and Star Wars titles.
I hope this might bring even wider public exposure not just to the webtoon format but to the thousands of indies who use the wider Webtoon platform.
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