own propert, their own business, which is a really tough position to be in.
“It has been a difficult time. [But] there are publishers who have enjoyed the benefits of people being in lockdown in their houses and having a real desire for reading, so it is hard to say how it is going to shape out.” He continued: “We know international trading was really badly impacted during lockdown. Obviously it had a huge impact on air freight and shipping, and even where publishers were able to get books out to a country, trying to get them out to the market is incredibly hard. We are expecting a reduc- tion in sales there quite significantly.”
We can’t hide away from the fact that if there was another lockdown, we would have another very severe impact upon this industry Stephen Lotinga, Publishers Association
Lotinga remains “hopeful” that the easing of the lockdown will lead to an increase in 2020’s sales. Last week Nielsen BookScan reported that the print market was up 18% year on year in volume sales since bookshops’ physical reopening (in England on 15th June), but whether this can be sustained is another question, not least should there be a second lockdown. “We have seen some initial increases but whether it sustains... We need to be fairly cautious about that. There’s a good chance we’re entering into a proper recession in the UK,” said Lotinga. He added: “I’m sure people have learned a lot from the first lockdown and therefore we have the benefit of the experience, but we can’t hide away from the fact that if there was another lockdown, we would have another very severe impact upon this industry.”
Staunch figures Before the coronavirus pandemic, citing 2019’s “robust figures”, Lotinga said the UK’s publishing industry was “flourishing”, with 2019 being “the strongest year in the history of publishing”. The PA’s 2019 figures show publishing sales by invoiced value totalled £6.3bn last year, an increase of 3.5% on 2018’s total and 19.8% higher than in 2015. Sales rises took place across virtually every area, although notably fiction slipped 1.1% to £0.6bn and sales of consumer e-books contracted by 4.1% to £240m. The challenges of the transition to digital for academic
TheBookseller.com
Consumer publishing
Breaking down the numbers
Total consumer publishing income in 2019 £2.0bn £1.6bn £0.3bn £1.3bn £0.6bn £0.6bn £1.0bn £0.4bn
YEAR ON YEAR 3.5%
Breakdown by format Print consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 3.3%
Digital consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 4.6%
Breakdown by market Home consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 4.4%
Export consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 1.6%
Breakdown by genre Fiction consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 1.1%
Non-fiction and reference consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 5.6%
Children’s consumer publishing income in 2019
YEAR ON YEAR 5.5%
publishing also showed in the botom line of its print books business, which was down by 4.6%.
Digital sales income for the industry as a whole rose 4.4% to £2.8bn, comprising a 19% share in both home and export markets. Print refused to be leſt behind, though it grew a leaner 2.8% to £3.5bn. Meanwhile, 59% of total invoiced sales (a whopping £3.7bn) came from exports in 2019, up 3.3%, while home sales totalled £2.4bn, a figure 3.7% up on the year before. Exports made up 32% of consumer sales income in 2019 and it is particularly important in academic and education publishing, where in 2019 it accounted for 72% of sales. On the consumer side (worth £2bn in 2019, up 3.5%), non-fiction and reference has become a powerhouse, up 5.6% in 2019 to top £1bn for the first time. Children’s books saw a rise of 5.5% to £387m. But in growth terms, the real music to many publishers’ ears is digital audiobooks, continuing their indomi- table rise with a 39.3% boost in downloads to £97m. The academic market nudged its total sales up 1.3%, to £3.3bn. Although it had fewer print book sales, its journals businesses managed to reap 3.5% more income in 2019, growing to £2.2bn. In education, sales rose 12.7% to £657m, with sales of ELT books increasing 19.8% to £322m, a trend the PA believes is only going to continue, as people wanting to access content online on a global basis are likely to need to understand, read and speak English.
But while the UK industry was on course to
be worth £10bn by 2030 before coronavirus, that will only happen now if the government properly supports the industry’s recovery, according to Lotinga. Chief among the PA’s priorities is to lobby the government to ensure a “fair” market for books—particularly support for bookshops, looking into how the UK can create “fair” markets online. “Amazon has been an incredibly important source of sales for the industry during this lockdown period,” Lotinga said, “but we do not want the beneficiary of the Covid period to be a single large tech company.” The PA will also lean on the government to avoid a no-deal Brexit, and provide funding for schools and universities so they can buy from publishers the resources that students need to learn remotely. “I think the industry is more than capable of returning to very real growth,” said Lotinga. “We put a figure on where we are heading, to be a £10bn industry by 2030, and we still think that can be the case—if the government puts in place initiatives neces- sary to ensure that happens.”
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