The publishing is certainly experiencing an historic revolution right now, but how are the key players coping with this change and what are their strategies and perspectives for winning the game of change?
Six industry leaders from around the world were brought together today at the Frankfurt Book Fair to discuss the state of the market in their own countries and to shed some light on where we go from here. Jesus Badenes, CEO of Planeta, kicked off proceedings with an overview of the Spanish market which we learnt experienced a five per cent growth last year. CEO of Simon & Schuster US, Carolyn Reidy, explained what had been happening State-side where books have turned out not to be recession proof, traffic is down in the stores, and sales have been in decline for two years in a row. In the UK, Peter Field (Chief Executive of Penguin) concurred that not enough data is currently available in order to really understand what is happening in the market and that none of us will really know until a full publishing lifecycle has taken place.
So what has been happening in France and Italy over the last year and what have been the most important market developments there? Representing both countries (as CEO of Flammarion and VP of RCS Libri) Teresa Cremisi told the audience that these two European countries were different in a couple of very important ways. France still has an impression of stability and the tradition of publishing is still strong but in Italy prices are changing constantly and the publishing panorama is in a state of constant flux. The lone retailer in the line-up today was Pascal Zimmer from Germany who reminded us that prices are still fixed for his market. Nevertheless, the German book industry is still strong. However he did voice concerns that there are currently only around 10,000 e-books on the market and that the digital programme in Germany is far too slow.
And so what of the launch Google Editions, as announced at TOC Frankfurt yesterday? What impact will it have on the market? In Jesus Badenes’s opinion its arrival provides a wonderful opportunity. He described it as a ‘fantastic window’ and pronounced that ‘all titles should be there’. Peter Field welcomed the fact that Google Editions would be ‘device agnostic’ but reminded everyone that it was just another edition, nothing more.
Questions about self-publishing, the impact of social media, and how we will sell digital rights going forward were also topics for discussion at this important debate.