“Prospects Are Exceptional”
Richard Curtis - DBWMarch 2012
From time to time I write a letter to all authors published by the Hachette UK group of companies which, of course, includes your own publisher. My purpose is to give you our perspective on what is going on in general in the world of publishing and bookselling and in particular at Hachette: how we are adapting to change, planning ahead and – most importantly – doing everything we can to be the very best publishers for your work. It is now a little over a year since I last wrote. My last letter concentrated on our own – and the industry’s – digital transformation. An enormous amount has happened since then on that front; so, in that regard, this letter too is much concerned with digital matters.
As the letter has a very wide circulation, I hope you will forgive its fairly general nature. As ever, I am very happy to answer specific questions, for example about the content of the letter, about our publishing of your own work or arising from the very fast-changing media world in which we now all live.
The UK consumer book market in general
Our reading habits continue to change. Research from YouGov showed that 1.3 million ebook readers were sold in the UK over Christmas 2011 alone. All told, there are perhaps 3.5 million ebook readers in circulation in the UK, and as many as 7 million tablets. Internationally, over 20 million tablets were sold in just the last quarter of 2011 alone. The variety and quality of tablets and ereaders, and the wide variety of ebooks available, is good news for readers. Wherever we are, we can buy books in an instant, and sales of Hachette UK-published ebooks continue to grow at an extraordinary rate, from 1% of our relevant sales in 2009 to 12% in 2011. That number is running at over 20% so far in 2012 and, for fiction, at over 30%. At present most readers are simply swapping the purchase of a print book for an ebook and I am afraid the market for printed books is shrinking. Last month, in Britain, sales of printed books were down by 13% year-on-year, and in 2011 the total consumer market for printed books in the UK was down by 7.8% – the third successive year of decline. Even after we factor in sales of ebooks, the totals for the UK and most of our other markets were still slightly down so ebook sales didn’t wholly account for the drop in sales of printed books, although that equation has possibly stabilised this year. Readers now expect to get a lot of information and entertainment for nothing and, for example, free reference material, satellite navigation and free online resources have severely reduced the sales of printed dictionaries, maps and guide books. The continuing move online, whether for ebooks, printed books or free reference material, is having a marked effect on our traditional markets and particularly on those booksellers who have no significant digital offering.
A sea change can be unsettling, particularly when it happens so fast but, on your behalf, we are very well placed to capitalise on all the opportunities this new world brings us. The Hachette group continues to be very successful; we have a clear strategy and we employ experts in every field, ensuring that we have the vision, the investment and the expertise to deal on equal terms with the biggest players in our markets. In short, you can be confident that your own publisher within the group is fully supported with all the resources they need to publish you in the very best way they can devise with you in all formats, now and in the future.
The full letter here.