“The History Channel has nixed future WWII programming. They claim: Doesn’t fit our demographics. The History Channel!?”

I was knocked for a loop by this. There seemed to be an endless parade of new WW II books published every year. And what about all those nights we saw Tony Soprano alone in his den captivated by documentary footage of Rommel in North Africa, the war in the air, and the Normandy invasion? Did the audience for WWII programming fade to black like the Soprano saga itself?

While books about WWII have been published in great numbers, and have probably sold a respectable number of copies (otherwise, so many of them wouldn’t be published every year), it turns out that very few have achieved bestseller status.

I was quite surprised to find that in the fifty years between 1948—when Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm, and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and 1998, when Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation became a publishing phenomenon— there were only two WWII books that made Publishers Weekly’s annual end-of-year list of the fifteen bestselling nonfiction titles: William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (which went on to become one of the bestselling nonfiction titles of all time), and Cornelius Ryan’s The Last Battle. Both of those books were published in the nineteen sixties. Walter Lord’s Day of Infamy, published in 1957, was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for a few weeks and then disappeared.

In 1998, Browkaw struck gold with The Greatest Generation. Essentially an oral history, Brokaw compiled fifty sketches of representative Americans that lived through the Great Depression and won WWII, cohorts he described as “the greatest generation any society has produced.” Brokaw’s inspiration for the book came when he was covering the fiftieth anniversary of the Normandy invasion. He wanted to tell their stories before they all died (it is estimated that 31,000 WWII veterans die every month, about 1,100 a day).

Why did Brokaw strike a chord in 1998? Back in 1984, Studs Terkel, the great oral historian, was also troubled by what he saw as our “disrememberance” about WWII and produced The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. Turkel’s book was a critical success (it was an edgy, unsentimental history of the war from the point of view of the riflemen who did most of the fighting and dying), but enjoyed only modest sales.

Brokaw’s book came along at a time when Americans were enjoying the fruits of the longest-lasting economic expansion in history. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the “end of history,” the story of a time when modest people were mobilized in a cause greater than themselves, resonated with many. Some suggested that Brokaw’s book was also a way for the children of the Greatest Generation to bridge the generation gap with their parents (fathers, mostly) and close the circle. While for others, Brokaw did nothing more than produce the perfect gift for dad, like Frank Sinatra’s Duets.

Whatever the reason for its resonance, The Greatest Generation enjoyed phenomenal commercial success. Unlike Turkel’s effort, however, it was not a critical success. Many, like Sean Elder of Salon, thought it was sentimental claptrap (“The Sappiest Generation”), while others, like Jacob Weisberg of Slate, suggested that Brokaw tapped into what he described as “generational loathing” and a powerful nostalgia for the clarity of the nineteen forties (“GI Envy”). In spite of widespread critical condescension, Brokaw sold boatloads of books and went on to produce a very successful sequel the following year that also made the Publishers Weekly annual list of top nonfiction bestsellers—along with the original.

Brokaw’s run of success in 1998-1999 was followed by the very strong showing of Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley and Ron Powers, which was number twelve on PW’s list of nonfiction bestsellers for 2000. Both Brokaw and Bradley were given an added boost by the popularity of movies like Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, and the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (produced by Spielberg).

Has the late nineteen nineties WWII boomlet run its course? Will there still be a mass audience for WWII books if or when Steven Spielberg finally moves on?

According to Bowker’s Books In Print database, almost 1,200 books about WWII were published in 2006. This was the most for any American military campaign. The graph below compares books published last year about major U.S. wars:

While quite a few books on WWII are published every year, the trend has been down since the peak year of 2004, when 1,358 were published. It’s not clear whether the decline will continue, or if the category is in the midst of a “market correction” that will leave it at a relatively high plateau. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but as WWII books peaked in 2004 and then began to decline, books about WWI have increased by fifty percent. When the counting is complete for 2007, the increase will probably be closer to one hundred percent. The graph below compares the output of new books about the two world wars since 2002:

So did the History Channel make the right decision when it decided to cancel all new WWII programming? If they’re looking to focus on and capture the 18-34 demographic, probably yes. The current audience for such programming is literally disappearing every day.

As for books , I think that there will always be a market for WWII. In addition to the “buffs” who live for the details of military campaigns and generalship, a broader audience is waiting to be “mobilized” in times of uncertainty and national danger, like 9/11 and Iraq.

Time spent reading has declined precipitously, test scores have gone down, and many companies are reporting that writing proficiency is so bad that it is beginning to affect the bottom line. Similar trends have been identified in the U.K. and other Western countries.

One thing has always amazed me about these reports, surveys, and op-ed pieces — they ignore the book business.

It stands to reason that if we are raising a generation of non-readers, and the current universe of readers is shrinking and becoming ever more addled and distracted by electronic entertainments that intrude on what was the most engaging of experiences, the book industry would finally crash and burn after an interminable tailspin. As you and I know, the book industry hasn’t crashed and burned, but that seems to have escaped the notice of industry observers and insiders who insist on describing book publishing as a hit-driven basket case lurching from one crisis to another.

In his wonderful review of Gail Pool’s Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (University of Missouri Press) that appeared in The New Republic, James Walcott describes a ritual self-flagellation in book publishing as shocking to the uninitiated as the practice in the Middle East:

The perceived perennial decline in book reviewing mirrors the perennial decline in book publishing. Like the Broadway theater, the publishing world is always tottering on its last legs, a wheezing shadow of its former glory waiting for the final curtain to drop, only to be jolted back into spastic life by an unexpected franchise boon (John Grisham, the Harry Potter series) and granted enough of a reprieve to keep the pity party going until the next financial slump. Much of this fatalism is standard issue, an occupational tic. It is easy to give in to despair, which is why so many give it a spin.

Book publishing may be a low-growth business, but that is not a death sentence. If you step back and look at book publishing in the aggregate, you will find that it is doing quite well compared to other entertainment media and industries.

According to figures from the Television Bureau of Advertising, TV leads the entertainment pack with $48.35 billion in sales in 2006. But guess who comes in second? Using 2006 sales figures released by the Book Industry Group, we find that the sick man of entertainment industries generated almost $36 billion. The graph below compares book publishing net sales in 2006 with those of recorded music, movies, DVD and VHS, video games and radio. The total for recorded music includes sales of digital tracts and concert ticket revenues:

Sources:
Books: Book Industry Study Group (BISG)
DVDs: Entertainment Merchant Association (EMA)
Radio: Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB)
Music: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ; Pollstar Magazine
Video Games: Entertainment Merchant Association (EMA)
Movie Box Office: Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

The story’s the same when you look at unit sales. More books were sold last year than all the music CD’s, music digital downloads, and movie tickets combined. It was also nearly triple the number of DVDs and more than twelve times the number of video games sold. The graph below compares 2006 unit sales:

Sources:
Books: Book Industry Study Group (BISG)
DVDs: Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
Music: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Video Games: Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
Movie Box Office: Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

As for new releases, a graph wouldn’t do the comparison justice. Whether you use Bowker’s old number of almost 200,000 or its new one of just under 300,000, no other entertainment industry produces so many new products each year. There were only 600 new movies released in 2006, 13,000 new DVD’s, and probably no more than 20,000 new music CDs (the Recording Industry Association of America stopped providing figures on new releases in 1999, when the total began to plunge).

The comparative media figures published by the folks at Veronis Suhler Stevenson every year are often quoted to show the declining share of our day and dollar devoted to books. But if you actually look at the figures you see a different story. While TV accounted for 38% of our entertainment spending in 2006 (far and away the most for any entertainment choice), consumer book purchases accounted for 23% of the rest. The average person spent $97.04 on books last year. This was second only to home videos (DVD/VHS), which accounted for 29% of non-TV spending, or $114.24. The graph below compares consumer spending per person in 2006 by entertainment choice:

Source: Veronis Suhler Stevenson

Books more than hold their own even if you look at media consumption by hours spent per year per person. While time spent reading books pales in comparison with that of TV, and may be left in the dust as people spend more time surfing the Internet, it has not lost much ground. Time spent reading books declined less than 1% in 2006, and less than 2% since 2002.

If you accept the estimates and projections from the Book Industry Study Group, then you must accept that book publishing is an entertainment force to be reckoned with – despite the best efforts of those who work in the industry to whine, complain, and say the sky is falling. During the very same Internet era that the NEA and others say that voluntary reading and test scores have dropped off the table, we have witnessed the greatest explosion in book publishing since Guttenberg — built on personal computing, supply chain efficiencies, heavy discounting, the data basing and aggregation of catalogs, and the commoditization of books that makes them saleable almost anywhere.

Unless and until we can reconcile book publishing’s bipolarity, it will be impossible to predict, with any degree of certainty, what its future will be – no matter what the pessimists and extreme optimists would have us believe.

Thanks to TV and the Internet, poker is perhaps the fastest-growing game in the world. On college campuses, poker has replaced video games as the diversion of choice. An estimated 50-80 million Americans — many of them women — now play poker. Poker has not only been embraced by the mainstream (like cigars and tattoos), but, in its rarefied version requiring thousands of dollars just to sit at the table, it has also become something of a status pastime reserved for 21st century “Masters of the Universe.”

Most observers say the poker boom began in 2003, after the World Poker Tour was broadcast on the Travel Channel. But it was not as simple as “film it and they will watch.” It took a completely new approach to televising poker.

Back in 2001, Steve Lipscomb, the current C.E.O. of World Poker Tour Enterprises Inc, had a revelation while producing a documentary film on poker. He realized that the only way to make watching poker on TV exciting and engaging was to let the viewers see each player’s hands (including the two face-down cards in the Texas Hold ‘em version of the game).

He put the cameras right on the rim of the table (an idea borrowed from a British TV program) and added some nifty editing to create a fast-moving human drama. He pitched his idea for a new kind poker TV to cable. The Travel Channel was interested, and two years later the World Poker Tour made its debut. It was an immediate success, and ESPN followed with the World Series of Poker. Needless to say, both shows had big paydays for the winners.

If shows like World Poker Tour, World Series of Poker, and Celebrity Poker Showdown made the game glamorous and exciting, it was the Internet that made it accessible. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poker “rooms” open to anyone, operate offshore to avoid the reach of those annoying U.S. gambling laws. The largest sites have millions of registered users. At peak playing times, hundreds of millions of dollars are wagered by tens of thousands of people playing at thousands of virtual “tables.”

The Internet sites act as the minor leagues for the cable TV competitions. While poker is a relatively simple game to learn, it requires experience to gain the skills necessary to compete at higher levels. Online poker is a fast game. Since there is no shuffling and dealing, people can play as many as 30 hands in an hour. Annie Duke, the best female player in the game (and tutor to actor Ben Affleck), said before the Internet, “it would take 20 years to get the amount of experience that it takes in a year now.”

It is also possible to win a seat at the World Series of Poker by winning an online tournament. This was the case with the now legendary Chris Moneymaker (that’s his name), a Tennessee accountant who won a seat at the World Series of Poker and came away with $2.5 million.

Books about poker have been published by all of the large trade houses, but the category leaders are New York City-based Cardoza Publishing and Henderson, Nevada-based Two-Plus-Two Publishing. Each has sold millions of copies of their respective catalogs. All told, 113 new books about poker were published in the U.S. in 2006, according to Bowker’s Books In Print database.

The number of new poker books has increased every year since 2002, when only a fraction of today’s output was published. Below is a graph showing the output of new poker books since 2002:

The bestselling poker books at Barnes & Noble include:

• Hold’em Wisdom for All Players: 50 Powerful Tips to Make You a Winning Player, by Daniel Negreanu. (Cardoza Publishing)
• Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, by Ben Mezrich. (Simon & Schuster)
• Harrington on Hold’em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments: Volume I: Strategic Play, by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. (Two-Plus-Two Publishing)
• Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country, by Andy Bellin. (HarperCollins)
• The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time, by Michael Craig. (Grand Central Publishing)
• Doyle Brunson’s Super System 2: A Course in Power Poker, by Doyle Brunson and Crandell Addington. (Cardoza Publishing)
• Harrington on Hold’em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments: Volume 2: The Endgame, by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. (Two-Plus-Two Publishing)
• Phil Gordon’s Little green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold’em, by Phil Gordon. (Simon & Schuster)
• The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, by Michael Craig. (Grand Central Publishing)
• Harrington on Hold’em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments: Volume 3: The Workbook, by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. (Two-Plus-Two Publishing)

Those four words have become part of the American lexicon.

Regardless of where you hear them, you immediately think of the Oscars, or the Emmys, or any game show you’ve ever watched. The sound of those four words creates an excitement that’s hard to beat. Whenever you hear, “And the winner is . . . ” you immediately think, “Riches!” It’s just human nature.

In the book publishing business, especially self-publishing, the winner is always the author…if he or she puts the effort into their work that it deserves.

But in the traditional publishing business, the winner is always the publisher because… well, publishers take as many rights as they can — sometimes ALL the rights — to a book, and they pay out very, very little to the author. The author may — and I should capitalize MAY — gain respectability by having Random House as their publisher, but that’s really a myth perpetuated by big publishers. Truth is, readers who buy the books don’t give a whit WHO published it.

Let’s look at some book stats, gathered from two professionals who have been in the self-publishing business a lot longer than I have. I’m speaking of Dan Poynter and Marilyn Ross. Both have extensive information and statistics on their websites, along with excellent resources for the author choosing to self-publish. I visit their sites at least once a quarter to see what new information they have posted and to learn more about making my business a success (which means making my authors a success, of course).

Dan Poynter and his advice can be found at ParaPublishing.

Dan helps us understand the publishing process by revealing stats such as:

Number of Publishers, by Year

• 1947: 357 publishers
• 1973: 3,000 publishers
• 1980: 12,000 Publishers. The New York Times, February 23, 1981.
• 1994: 52,847 publishers. Books in Print.
• 2003: About 73,000 (plus those who publish through POD/DotCom publishers; they use publisher ISBN blocks.)

Who Is Publishing How Many Books?

• 78% of the titles published come from the small/self-publishers.
• 2002: The five large New York publishers accounted for 45% of the market (made 45% of the sales.) –Publishers Weekly, June 16, 2003.
• 1999: the top 20 publishers accounted for 93% of sales.
  –Andre Schiffrin, The Business of Books in the Washington Post. October 18, 2000.
• 2000: 80% of the book sales are controlled by five conglomerates: Bertlesman (Random House), Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Time Warner, Disney and Viacom/CBS.
  –Andre Schiffrin, The Business of Books in the Washington Post. October 18, 2000.
• 2002: Five large New York publishers had US sales of $4.102 billion PLUS worldwide sales of $5.68 billion:
  • Random House: $2.1 billion worldwide
  • Penguin Group: $1.3 billion
  • HarperCollins: $1.1 billion
  • Simon & Schuster: $690 million (est)
  • AOL/Time Warner: $415 million
    –Publishers Weekly, June 16, 2003

Lots of big numbers there. Notice how POD fits in the picture, and how the “big boys” account for only 45% of the market.

Let’s move on to Marilyn Ross and her resources:

I personally like her bullet point that says, “Women buy 68% of all books sold” (about 8/10ths of the way to the bottom). She doesn’t qualify where that comes from, but my research shows that women, as major communicators (we have more communication-type of grey matter than men, just ask Michele Miller), are definitely big book buyers and readers.

Another Marilyn bullet that stands out is (2 bullet points below “Women buy 68%), “52% of all books are not sold in bookstores! They are merchandised via mail order, online, in discount or warehouse stores, through book clubs, in nontraditional retail outlets, etc.” Which means it’s is just a waste of time and energy to be worrying about whether or not your book is on the shelf at Barnes and Noble.

I also like this bullet—“The average number of copies sold per title of a POD company that printed 10,000 different titles: 75 books.” As a POD company that is very selective of whom we publish, we work hard to sell more than 75 copies of our author’s books. Well, we HELP our authors sell more than 75 – author participation is critical. Without the author’s help and commitment, selling even 75 copies can be difficult.

And . . . drum roll, please . . . my favorite quote on Marilyn’s industry stats page is this one:

“Blogs can lead to books. A blog is a great place to flesh out ideas, get reader feedback, and sometimes catch the attention of an agent or publisher. Two of the most recent bloggers to find success through this medium are Markos Moulitas and Jerome Armstrong. Chelsea Green will soon bring out Crashing the Gate, their blueprint for Democratic success in 2006 and 2008.”

I advise everyone to visit the Dan Poynter and Marilyn Ross websites. Read their advice, buy their books, and learn about the publishing industry. There is a wealth of information to help you become the success you want to be.

I hope 2008 will be the year those magic words ring in your ears, “And the winner is . . . You!”

Among all the players in the trade, only Amazon consistently assigns a current events subject heading to books. It’s all we have to quantify new title output for this category. Searching on hardcovers (to filter out nonbook items) classified by Amazon as current events, we find that some 3,000 new current events and political commentary books are published annually. Output appeared to peak in 2003, but after declining in 2004 and 2005, the number of new titles spiked in 2006 to a new high. The graph below shows the trend in new title output for current events books since 2002:

Current events and political commentary is probably the most star-studded adult nonfiction category. In recent years, names like Thomas Friedman, Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Bob Woodward have dominated the national conversation. Friedman’s The World is Flat, has sold more than 2.4 million copies in hardcover, and the just-released trade paper edition should sell enough to push the grand total well over 3 million; Woodward’s trilogy on the run-up to the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns has sold over 2.2 million copies in hardcover; and Bill O’Reilly’s last couple of hardcover bestsellers have sold just under 2 million. A few years back, Michael Moore seemed to find the right formula, selling almost 1.5 million in hardcover. Ann Coulter’s last two bestsellers have sold just under 1 million in hardcover, and her just-released tantrum is climbing the charts.As of this writing, the hottest titles in the current events and political commentary category are:

• Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Doubleday)
• Ann Coulter’s If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans (Crown)
• Naiomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Henry Holt)
• Laura Ingraham’s Power to the People (Regnery)
• Mearsheimer & Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Farrar, Strous and Giroux)
• Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint’s Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Thomas Nelson)
• Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World (Knopf)
• Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal (Norton)
• Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofacism (Doubleday)

Environmentalism, politics, the culture wars, Iraq, and the clash of civilizations are the focus of recent deals by publishers. Below are a few of the more interesting current affairs titles from Michael Cader’s deals database, along with the original descriptions:

• THE PALACE WAR, by NYT reporter David Cloud and WSJ reporter Greg Jaffe. About the four generals — John Abizaid, George Casey, Peter Chiarelli, David Petraeus — who’ve proved most influential in the conduct of the Iraq War, revealing how the Army’s winnowing process led to their ascension, and how each man’s theories about modern warfare have been — and are being – tested. (Crown)
• THROUGH ISLAMIC EYES: Another Perspective on World History, by Tamim Ansary. A narrative of world history as it is understood by the Islamic world — a story that both intersects with and diverges from the Western narrative. (Public Affairs)
• TOO HOT: China’s New Economy and Global Warming, by Former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Robert Collier. A first-hand account of China’s disastrous “carbon footprint.” (University of California Press)
• CIRCLE OF GREED: The Rise and Fall of the Most Feared Lawyer in America, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Patrick Dillon and Carl Cannon. About the rise and fall of Bill Lerach of Milberg, Weiss, Lerach, once the leading class-action lawyer in America and now a convicted felon, a morality tale of greed and corruption in the legal and corporate worlds, set against the biggest financial boom in our history, pitched as in the spirit of Conspiracy of Fools and The Brightest Boys in the Room. (Doubleday)
• THE ENEMY WITHIN: The FBI and the Search for National Security, about the Bureau’s long practice of sweeping up loyal Americans in its dragnets and the deep disorganization within its own ranks, and THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE ON EARTH: How the American Military Shaped the World, both by NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tim Weiner. (Random House)
• STUFFED AND STARVED: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, by Raj Patel. A global investigation from the “green deserts” of Brazil and protester-packed streets of South Korea to bankrupt Ugandan coffee farms and barren fields of India that reveals how a few powerful, rich food distributors control the health of the entire world. (Melville House)
• GREEN IS THE NEW RED, WHITE AND BLUE: A Manifesto, on how green has gone mainstream, by NY Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman . (Farrar, Straus)
• AIN’T GONNA TAKE IT NO MORE: HOW ANGRY BLACK MEN ARE CHANGING AMERICA, by Law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler. About the effects of mass incarceration and racial profiling on young African-American men, whose anger and distrust of government is transforming society through jury nullification and the mainstream appeal of a subversive hip-hop culture, demonstrating a need for change in our criminal justice system. (New Press)

While observers agonize over annual growth rates and what is assumed to be a shrinking piece of the personal entertainment pie, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that by itself, the U.S. adult trade segment would constitute the world’s largest book publishing market.

In their essay on trade publishing appearing in Book Industry Trends 2007, Stephanie Oda and Glenn Sanislo cover all the usual talking points:

1. Can publishing survive a year without blockbusters like Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code?
2. Will books be able to compete with other forms of entertainment and win the hearts and minds of increasingly distracted and time-pressed consumers?
3. Who among the publishers will win the war for shelf-space, and how do you compete against a retailer like Barnes & Noble, who is also a publisher?
4. Where will the digitization of content lead, and can publishers find a way to monetize it?

No concrete answers to these questions were offered by the authors or the industry heavyweights they interviewed. They did note, however, that publishers were coming out with new large print formats to accommodate the failing eyesight of middle aged Baby Boomers, establishing beachheads in China, and launching new religious imprints.

These aren’t insignificant developments, but, far more important in the long run, are recent efforts by the major trade houses to utilize Web 2.0 technology, including the promotion of mid-list authors through “virtual book tours” and self-sustaining web pages, and voting schemes to judge the popularity of unsolicited manuscripts from the slush pile. And while there is currently no successful business model for the sale of e-books in the trade, the digitization of publisher backlists ensures that they will be ready for any application (e-books or web-based) that may come down the pike.

So what kind of year did adult trade publishing have in 2006?

According to the Book Industry Study Group, the adult trade segment generated $9.18 billion in sales in 2006, an increase of 3.9% over 2005. BISG is projecting a 3% increase for 2007, and an average increase of 2.5% for 2008-2011. Net publisher unit sales were estimated at 824 million copies in 2006, a 1.7% increase over 2005. BISG projects increases of less than 0.5% or less for 2007-2011. Average dollars per unit was 11.1 in 2006, with projected increases every year up to 12.4 in 2011.

The split of net publisher dollar sales by channel in 2006 was—

• Domestic = $8 billion (90%)
• Export = $338 million (4%)
• Book Clubs = $307 million (3%)
• Mail Order = $249 million (3%)

The split for domestic direct to retailer/consumer channels were:

• Retailers, Mainly Books = $4.1 billion (50%)
• Retailers, Mainly Nonbook = $2.1 billion (25%)
• Colleges = $810 million (10%)
• Libraries & Institutions = $742 million (9%)
• Direct to Consumer = $301 million (4%)
• Schools = $106 million (1%)

The last time Bowker separately tracked new title output of trade publishers was in 2005. That year, the dozen largest trade houses published 17,750 new adult titles and editions. About a third of the new books were fiction. Output of new adult trade titles has stayed remarkably consistent over the years, hovering around 17,000. Below are annual output totals for the last seven years compiled from Bowker’s Books In Print database:

• 2005 = 17,750
• 2004 = 17,499
• 2003 = 17,620
• 2002 = 17,241
• 2001 = 18,225
• 2000 = 16,856
• 1999 = 17,147

Also compiled from Books In Print are average list prices of the major adult trade formats in 2005:

• Hardcovers = $27.55
• Trade Paperbacks = $15.77
• Mass Market Paperbacks= $7.42

According to Publishers Weekly, there were twelve adult trade hardcovers that sold at least 1 million copies in 2006. With one or two exceptions, the authors were established brands. Stephen King had two hardcovers on this short list:

• For One More Day, by Mitch Albom. Hyperion (2,735,232)
• The Innocent Man, by John Grisham. Doubleday (2,192,000)
• Cross, by James Patterson. Little, Brown (1,326,197)
• Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks. Warner (1,255,425)
• Next, by Michael Crichton. HarperCollins (1,232,429)
• Hanibal Rising, by Thomas Harris. Delacorte (1,200,000)
• Lisey’s Story, by Stephen King. Scribner (1,200,000)
• Marley & Me, by John Grogan. Morrow (1,198,015)
• The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. Crown (1,096,762)
• Twelve Sharp, by Janet Evanovich. St. Martin’s (1,050,397)
• Culture Warrior, by Bill O’Reilly. Broadway (1,014,723)
• Cell, by Stephen King. Scribner (1,000,000)

In the world of higher education, the formula is pretty simple: textbooks and other course materials are selected by college and university faculty. It’s not so easy for the nation’s primary and secondary schools. They must buy textbooks selected by shadowy state adoption committees. Because adoptions tend to fall on certain years, the El-Hi segment can be somewhat volatile. Last year, for example, revenues from adoptions were $650 million, down 28% from the $900 million rung up in 2005. The Book Industry Study Group estimates that adoption revenues will increase to $760 million in 2007, $900 million in 2008, and $950 million in 2009. Not surprisingly, they are also projecting robust overall sales increases for those years.

The adoption process was first implemented after the Civil War, because Southern states wanted separate textbooks that told its version of the war between the states. There are 22 states that formally participate in the textbook adoption process, with the remaining 28 comprising what is known as “open territory”. The selection process in adoption states has national implications because most non-adoption states purchase textbooks selected by neighboring state adoption advisory committees.

The State Advisory Committee selects teachers and lay people to review textbooks that have been submitted for adoption. Based on the evaluation of the “experts” and input from the public, the State Advisory Committees makes adoption recommendations to the State Boards of Education, who, ultimately, make the final decision. Textbooks are selected for six-year cycles.

Critics of the textbook adoption process say it has resulted in the “dumbing down” of primary and secondary education. Publishers, they say, are so concerned with covering every item on a state’s list of teaching standards, and avoiding politically incorrect references that may offend the adoption committees or their constituents, that they end up producing bland works that don’t engage either students or teachers. Publishers point to benefits of the adoption process like teaching texts that have six-year price and availability guarantees, regular review of curriculum, equal access to materials, elimination of redundancies, and a control on manufacturing specs.

In their essay on El-Hi publishing that appeared in Book Industry Trends 2007, Stephanie Oda and Glenn Sanislo describe a market dominated by four publishers accounting for 70% of total revenues: Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill, Harcourt Education, and Houghton Mifflin. There are also many new players in the market who joined the fray during the period of rising enrollments in the 1990’s. As important as state adoptions and enrollment are, however, Oda and Sanislo correctly identify the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) as the single most important force in school publishing today.

The NCLB Act of 2001 was signed into law in January 2002. It was intended to improve the performance of primary and secondary schools through standards-based education and mandated that states, school districts, and local schools be held accountable for “positive outcomes”. States must show that its students have achieved basic proficiency (as defined by the states) in reading, math, and science, and teachers must demonstrate “subject expertise.” NCLB created a huge demand for training, assessment, and testing materials, resulting in a windfall for some publishers. On the other hand, increases in NCLB funding to states have been offset by cutbacks in general operating funds. Positive or negative, the influence of NCLB on school publishing has been nothing short of profound.

According to Book Industry Trends 2007, the El-Hi publishing segment generated $4.75 billion in net publisher sales in 2006, a 1% increase over 2005 and 13% of the book industry total last year. Thanks to growth in state adoptions, the Book Industry Study Group projects healthy increases of 7.3% for 2007, 6.9% for 2008, and 7.2% for 2009. Growth will dip to 3.5% for 2010-2011. Sales of net publisher units in 2006 was 177.2 million, a decrease of 1.5% from 2005, and 6% of the industry total.

BISG projects increases of 4.8%, 4.7%, and 5% for 2007-2009, slowing to around 1.4% for 2010-2011. Average dollars per unit was $26.80 in 2006, an increase of 70 cents over 2005. BISG projects average dollars per unit will increase another 70 cents in 2007 and increase every year until it reaches $30.30 in 2011. Over 96% of El-Hi publications are sold through domestic channels, and 96% of domestic sales are to schools.