Let’s start with the first step and see how far we get today.

Step 1. Define the Problem.

I need to come up with questions about problems I see in book publishing.

Are traditional publishing models becoming mostly unviable?

Is book publishing going the way of the Internet, much like music and video?

How much money is made from electronic books?

How much money is made from traditional book publishing?

Is publishing a book, online or offline, a viable source of income for authors?

Who makes the most money directly from book sales? Is it the publishers, authors, distributors, or retailers?  How much money does each of them make for offline & online book sales?

How else do authors make money from book publishing?

What steps are involved in the traditional publishing of a book?

What steps are involved in the online book publishing process?

What’s the disparity between online book sales and physical book sales?

I think I have enough questions to help me figure out what types of data I will need to look for.  I want to make it clear that my main focus is on the viability of traditional publishing and the viability of online publishing.

I will define viability as the ability to generate profit.  To determine viability, we’ll need to analyze book sales statistics across the board.

Naturally, the next step is observation and data gathering.  The next hurdle to leap over will be in obtaining the data for analysis.  I will also need to learn more about statistics to properly analyze my data.  If my analyses are flawed, then I’ll botch the scientific method.

Can anyone point me to where I can get the data I need?  Does anyone have any data they can share with me?  Does anyone else want to get in on this project?

· Sales of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels are reaching Olympian heights. All five books in the kids’ series are in USA TODAY’s top 10. It’s the first time that’s happened, and sales are being driven by the movie version of the first book. Accounting for half of the top 10 is impressive, but Riordan has a long way to go to break Stephenie Meyer’s record.

· Despite what author Charles Pellegrino calls “one colossal error” in his research for The Last Train from Hiroshima, he doesn’t expect it will affect James Cameron’s plans to make a movie based on the non-fiction book. As first reported in The New York Times, Pellegrino relied on a veteran who falsely claimed to be on an observation plane when the atomic bomb was dropped. Pellegrino tells USA TODAY that by next week, he’ll finish five pages of corrections for future editions.

· Thrilled — that’s the word for British writer Chris Cleave, 36. The new paperback edition of Little Bee enters the list at No. 22. Published last year to strong reviews, the novel about a London journalist and a Nigerian refugee has been optioned by BBC Films with Nicole Kidman attached.

For all the news from this week’s Best-Selling Books list, see Thursday’s editions of USA TODAY for the top 50 books or log ontowww.top150.usatoday.com for the complete list of 150 best-selling books from last week.

Rankings for USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List are based on retail sales data collected each week that include more than 2.5 million books from about 7,000 independent, chain, discount and online stores. USA TODAY’s list ranks titles regardless of genre or format, providing one of the best assessments of which books are most popular among readers and consumers each week. USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list has been published each Thursday in the newspaper’s Life section since October 28, 1993.

USA TODAY was founded in 1982 with a mission to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its flagship newspaper and popular Web site, USA TODAY engages the national conversation and connects readers online through social media applications. USA TODAY, the nation’s number one newspaper in print circulation with a total average daily print circulation of nearly 1.9 million, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper Web site which launched in 1995, reach a combined 6.1 million readers daily. The USA TODAY news and information brand also includes: USA TODAY Education, USA TODAY LIVE, USA TODAY Mobile, and USA TODAY Sports Weekly. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

You might be thinking with the higher royalties and Amazon’s Digital Text Platform open to all prospective authors that the time of opportunity for authors has finally come. “Hooray! I can write for a living and never have to work again!”

Hold on there, partner. If you lean too far out on the neck of that horse, you’re liable to fall off and git yourself hurt! (So much for my cowboy imitations. . . .)

The horse in my little analogy is the marketing and platform building that remain as important as ever to get book sales moving. Publishers are either discovering this truth and reaping the benefits, or sticking to the tired and worn out mantra that, “Everyone will come to us because we’re the only place to get quality content.” Can you visualize the view of their upturned nostrils?

Samhain Publishing and Bethany House Publishers, two opposite poles on the belief system magnet, have harnessed the true power of Kindle to boost their revenues. The way they’ve done it is with charging nothing for their books. And it’s not just Samhain and Bethany House who are doing it—3 out of the top 4, 16 out of the top 25, and 64 out of the top 100 Kindle titles are free downloads.

Samhain is not as big as Harlequin Publishing, but they may soon be. Christine Brashear, Samhain’s head of marketing, has offered a new free book every two weeks for the last year. Not only has it shot the giveaway book into the bestseller list, it’s dramatically increased sales of other paid-for titles. In October, she designated Giving Chase as her free sample and garnered a whopping 26,897 downloads during that month. Not only that, Chased and Taking Chase, two other books in that series, jumped from 97 to 2666 and 119 to 3279 paid downloads, respectively, from September to October.

Bethany House Publishers employs a similar strategy, releasing free downloads of titles for a limited time to build a following that would pay to download them. They currently occupy the top two spots on the Kindle Bestseller list, with Cape Fear and Southern Storm, two Christian thrillers by Terri Blackstock. Last week, another Bethany House author, Brandilyn Collins, held the top two spots with Exposure and Dark Pursuit. Now that Collins’ two books are no longer free, they’ve fallen to #19 and #24, but would they have ever gotten that high in the first place without the exposure that free downloads generated?

“Brian O’Leary, a principal at Magellan Media Consulting Partners, which advises publishers, said that there was a risk that free reading could eventually “supplant paid reading.”” I sure hope he doesn’t talk any grocery stores into halting their free sample giveaways. Keep a watch out for all those angry mobs demanding free food outside your local supermarket to start appearing any day now…

Brian Murray, chief executive at HarperCollins, showed even more flexibility by pronouncing that “free is not a business model.” He’s right, unless you’re talking about building an audience with free, valuable-to-them content.

If you want to win in the e-book market, offer a free book download for a limited time, make sure it’s a good sample, and then line up the rest of the series of your titles for consumers to buy. (If you read my eulogy to Billy Mays last summer, you’ll notice how similar the secrets of hawking infomercial products are to the secret of selling e-books.)

The only problem for independent authors is that they’re apparently shut out of the free sample opportunity. According to a blog post by Ben Metcalfe, $0.99 is as cheap as independent authors can set the price of any of their e-book uploads. Everyone may be able to upload Kindle content with a chance for double the old royalties, but not everyone can use the best Kindle tools for building a following.

That means that you still have to build a platform on your own.

Just because only publishing companies can offer free Kindle downloads, doesn’t mean that you can’t leverage the powers of the internet to make your writing a success. Start a website. Offer free, quality content. Get more and more people to read it. If you need inspiration, watch Julie & Julia, since that’s exactly what she did to get a book and movie deal.

Then, when you’ve got a few thousand followers, release a cheap download version on Kindle and make an impact. It may take anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 downloads in a month to attain a position somewhere on their bestseller list. That number isn’t out of reach, but it does require work. Are you ready to roll up your sleeves?

While you’re churning out the sweat it takes to get noticed, the New York Times will be producing the sweat of nervousness, hoping that people will, literally, buy large quantities of their rarified content. On the same day that Amazon announced an increase in author royalties, the newspaper giant announced that Internet users would now have to pay to download website content over a specified monthly amount. This is now their second attempt at charging for online content. It’s “where we think the web is going,” said Arthur Sulzberger, NYT publisher.

According to Mythbusters, standing on a sinking ship won’t suck you down to the bottom with it, but it will remove the thing that kept you out of the shark- or iceberg-infested waters. I’m not sure what future the New York Times has locked into their tunnel vision, but the Internet started on the idea of free, shared content and will always cater to those who apply that model to their business-building strategy.

Royalty rates will rise and fall. Publishers and corporations will either adapt with changing conditions, or cling to the delusions of their reputation’s power to make money. Opportunities will come and go for the little guy trying to make a name for himself in the big, bad world. As long as a capitalistic society exists, anyone who wants to succeed will have to craft a compelling product and then work their butts off to tell everyone in the world about it.

Any other solution is merely the product of an unharnessed imagination.

Now, get back on that pony and ride!

“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.

In an effort to replace the Harry Potter cash cow, Scholastic has come up with a new multi-media series called The 39 Clues. Consisting of ten books and related web-based content, the series is, according to Scholastic, their way of going to “where the kids are” – meaning beyond books to the Internet, videos, and other digital destinations.

Targeting young readers 8-12 years old, 39 Clues is the story of the Cahills, the most powerful clan in the world. World-historical figures, including Benjamin Franklin and Mozart, belong to the extended Cahill clan. The various books and other content in the series will be about the efforts of the 14-year-old Amy and 11-year-old Dan Cahill to beat other members of the clan to the 39 clues that lead to “ultimate power.”

The first book in the series is Sea of Monsters , written by Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson series. Riordan also wrote the story outline for the other nine books in the series. The second, third, and fourth titles will be written by (respectively) Gordon Korman, Peter Lerangis, and Jude Watson. New titles will be released every two or three months.

In addition to the books, Scholastic will create online games, character-written blogs, maps, treasure hunts, and videos. Unlike other muti-media bundles, the non-book content will be more than just an afterthought. Scholastic is building a synergy that will, they hope, drive readers to the web and surfers to the books. Editors worked with Riodan, author of the first book, to make sure that he included details that could be used in the games. The books will also include collectible cards that can also be used to find clues. By creating a hook from the web to books, Scholastic also hopes to reel in some reluctant readers.

Has Scholastic come up with its next franchise property and our next reading craze? I’m pretty sure they’re not foolish enough to think they can simply anoint a successor to Harry Potter. Don’t tell that to the Times, who would have us believe that a serendipitous phenomenon like Harry Potter can be conjured from demographics. Even if it could be, in recent years Scholastic has not had such a great track record in picking winners not named Harry Potter.

Looking at 2006, which was not a Harry Potter year, Scholastic managed to place only seven front list hardcover titles in Publishers Weekly’s list of the top 100 bestsellers; only five (not counting the paperback reprint of Harry Potter 6 which sold over 1.3 million copies) of their front list paperback titles made the PW top 100. Among hardcover back list titles, there were only three Scholastic titles in PW’s top 100; not counting Harry Potter titles, there were only ten Scholastic titles in PW’s bestselling 200 paperback back list titles.

Yes, Scholastic does sell a lot of books through book fairs and book clubs, but its lackluster performance in the trade is revealing. In fact, what the PW lists tell us is that Scholastic is not really a market leader or cultural arbiter. Looking at just the number of bestsellers, I think it would be fair to say that these days HarperCollins has a much better understanding of “where the kids are” than Scholastic does.

Last week, Scholastic released its earnings report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2008, and it was mixed. Revenue for trade publishing, the Harry Potter segment of the Scholastic business, actually declined by more than $11 million. Only strong sales of the Harry Potter boxed set allowed the segment to achieve profitability. Overall, it was the double-digit revenue and profitability growth of Scholastic’s international segment that pulled the rest of the company along. Scholastic is sticking to its revenue goal of $2.3 to $2.5 billion for fiscal year 2008.

Scholastic is a huge, successful company. But I think that it lost its edge, and perhaps even its way, when the Harry Potter windfall landed in its lap. I agree with those who think that for ten years Scholastic was so focused on the next Harry Potter campaign that the rest of their catalog suffered. They became more marketer than publisher. I also think that one of the industry’s dirty little secrets was that the Harry Potter series was such a huge success because it was bought by adults for adults, especially young adult women. As a result, Scholastic forgot how to be a children’s publisher.

So will 39 Clues be the next Harry Potter? For Scholastic’s sake, let’s hope not.

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)

The 2008 presidential election might seem far away, but cable news indicates otherwise. This is the first of an oh-so-relevant series about books by or about politicians, wannabe politicians, talking heads, and other myriad wonks. Some weeks there might be a column. Some weeks there might just be what we think are pithy headlines and commentary and a few links. Some weeks, if we’re feeling frisky, we might post a picture of a random object–say, a solar flare or a covered wagon–just to leave you wondering what possible relevance it has to the accompanying commentary.

In this first edition: The ‘Politics’ shelves of bookstores are swelling with books on presidential hopefuls. Last month was quite Hillary heavy.

• Her Way (Little, Brown & Company, $29.99) by Don Van Natta, Jr., and Jeff Gerth is raising a lot of hoopla for its indication that the Clintons had a “20-year plan” to dominate American politics, Bill first, Hillary second. Can’t you just picture the Clintons sitting crosslegged in a candlelit Arkansas basement, pricking themselves with pins for a blood pact? Awww. Despite an endorsement from Sean Hannity and a title that makes its subject sound like a petulant thirteen-year-old, the book insists it’s balanced. Van Natta says he may even vote for Hillary.
• A Woman in Charge (Knopf, $27.95) by Carl Bernstein seems to be more popular. Her Way’s Amazon.com peak was a sales rank of 257, and it now languishes in the 3000’s. Bernstein’s reportedly more evenhanded bio hasn’t dipped below 500; currently it’s at a healthy 131. The New York Times liked this one better, too. Do readers find this book less biased, or do they just want to save a couple of bucks on cover price? We may never know.
• The intentions of Bay Buchanan’s Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton (Regenery Publishing, Inc., $27.95), which came out in May, are pretty clear from the get-go. The cover shows Hillary as a looming, shadowy mass of crow’s feet and double chins (a far cry from the black-turtlenecked Lifetime-special treatment of her 2004 autobiography). The flap copy says the author–Pat’s sister–will reveal Hillary’s calculating switch from far left to center as she looks to the White House. Shucks. Considering the title, I thought the book was going to be about scandalous eye lifts and chin implants.

Love or or hate her, there’s a Hillary book for you.

Full analyses of Van Natta, Gerth, and Bernstein’s books here and here.

The Nielsen Company has released a report on the pervasive, indomitable Harry Potter brand in media, PW Daily reports. Most curious in the report is the money made from Potter transubstantiation: U.S. consumers spent $11.8 million on Harry Potter-licensed trademark cookies, candy and gum products since June 2002. Some other highlights:

• The first four Harry Potter films have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide
• The four Harry Potter movie soundtracks combined have sold more than 1.1 million copies in the U.S. There have been 180,000 total downloads of songs from those soundtracks.
• According to a recent Nielsen Cinema survey of moviegoers, 28% of persons 12+ in the U.S. have read one or more of the previous Harry Potter books, and 15% have read all the Harry Potter books to date.

According to Nielsen’s press release of the top selling books in the U.S. since 2001, three were Potter books. Four Potter films are included in the 20 highest grossing films of all time.

Reading the essay on college publishing by Stephanie Oda and Glenn Sanislo in the 2007 edition of Book Industry Trends, however, you would think that things are going swimmingly. Kris Clerkin, president of the Houghton Mifflin College Division looks at the glass as half full. “We’re all looking at it as an opportunity”, she said, referring to the specter of accountability. Gary Shapiro, senior V.P. for Intellectual Property at Follett, told Oda and Sanislo much the same thing: “Textbooks and the support materials that publishers are putting with them are outcome driven.”

Weighing in on price, Shapiro says that what bothers students is not high prices, but having “to buy something they don’t need.” Bookstores and publishers should be finding ways to “integrate the textbooks more into the courses to ensure that students and faculty perceive their value to the educational process.” Shapiro is not worried about used books, either. He claims that Follett’s used books sales have “shifted” (increased, I assume) only 2-3% in the last 20 years. And while more electronic support materials have been available in recent years, the delivery and wide acceptance of core e-textbooks are not happening anytime soon.

So what do the numbers say?

According to Book Industry Trends 2007, the college segment generated $4.6 billion in 2006, an increase of 3.1% over 2005. The Book Industry Study Group projects a 2.9% increase for 2007, and a 2.7-2.8% growth rate for 2008-2011. Net unit sales were 77 million copies in 2006, an increase of 0.6% over 2005. BISG projects a 0.4% increase for 2007, and increases of 0.5-0.6% for 2008-2011. Net dollar sales for the college segment accounted for 13% of the industry total in 2006, and net unit sales 2.5%. Average dollars per unit in 2006 was 60.4. Hardcovers accounted for 67% of net dollar sales.

Domestic channels accounted for 92% of total sales in the college segment. The percentage split between the domestic channels were:

• Colleges (77%)
• Schools (8%)
• Libraries & Institutions (7%)
• General Retailers (5%)
• Direct to Consumers (3%)

The top five publishers in the higher education market account for almost 90% of the revenue and the vast majority of new textbooks published in this country. They are: Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Thomson Learning, and John Wiley & Sons. According to Bowker’s Books In Print database, the Big Five collectively publish about 5,000 new textbooks per year, at an average suggested retail price of around $75, not including ancillary materials.

Textbooks, however, are not the whole story. There are thousands of other books published every year that are described as being suitable for a “college audience,” and are, in fact, used by faculty in their classes. In 2006, according to Books In Print, 16,905 books suitable for a college audience were published in the U.S., a 19% increase over 2005. Of the almost 17,000 books published for the college audience last year, 49% had a list price of at least $50, while 18% had retail prices of at least $100. The split in 2005 was virtually the same.

What are the bestselling textbooks? That’s hard to say, because most online retailers who sell textbooks provide a simple ISBN-based interface that allows students to quickly buy and sell textbooks. Anyone who visits a textbook site knows exactly what they’re looking for. Browsing a list of the most popular textbooks or coursebooks doesn’t make much sense for what is essentially a transaction. Volorebooks.com is one of the few textbook marketplaces that does provide a regularly updated bestseller list. Following is a sampling from their top 50:

• Surf Science: An Introduction to Waves for Surfing, by Tony Butt (Univ. of Hawaii Pr.)
• Biology, by Neil A. Campbell (Addison-Wesley)
• Meaning of Fossils Episodes in the History of Palaeontology, by Martin J.S. Woodrick (Univ. of Chicago Pr.)
• The Earth Encompassed: A History of the Environmental Sciences, by Peter J. Bowler (W.W. Norton)
• Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function and Transformation, by William R. Coleman (Cambridge Univ. Pr.)
• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (American Psychological Association)
• American Pagent: A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey (Houghton Mifflin School)

Since those glory days of paperback publishing, when visionaries like de Graff attempted to bring the best – and even the not-so-good – books within reach of “the common man,” mass market paperbacks have been squeezed by relatively inexpensive, high quality trade paperback editions on the one hand and heavily discounted hardcovers on the other. In recent years, retailers and others have been returning nearly half of all mass market titles to publishers. Not surprisingly, observers have predicted the demise of the format. And yet, in 2006, net publisher sales (after returns) of mass market titles accounted for 13% of the entire trade segment.

According to Book Industry Trends 2007, mass market paperbacks generated sales of $1.8 billion last year, a 2.7% increase over 2005. The Book Industry Study Group is projecting a very healthy increase of 4% for 2007 plus a more than respectable rate of growth around 3% through 2011. Publisher net unit sales of mass market editions were 575 million in 2006, which was 19% of all units sold in the trade last year, but only a 0.2% increase over 2005. BISG projects a 1.5% increase in unit sales for 2007, with steadily decreasing rates of growth through 2011.

Most mass market paperbacks are sold to wholesalers and “rack jobbers.” The percentage split for net dollar sales by channel was:

• Direct to Retailer/Consumer = 40%
• Sales to Wholesalers/Jobbers = 56%
• Book Clubs/Mail Order = 4%

Net publisher sales (in millions) direct to retailers and consumers broke out this way:

• Retailers, Mainly Books = $221
• Exports = $158
• Direct to Consumer = $147
• Retailers, Mainly Nonbook = $116
• Colleges = $78
• Schools = $6
• Libraries and Institutions = $3

The percentage split in net unit sales by channel was about the same as dollar sales.

According to Bowker’s Books In Print database, more than 5,000 new mass market paperbacks are published each year (2005 was the last year that Bowker compiled separate figures for new titles and average prices by format), a decline of almost 30% from 2000, when 7,350 new mass market editions were published. Since 2002, mass market output has stabilized and is slowly inching upwards. In 2005, adult fiction and children’s lit accounted for almost 90% of all new mass market paperbacks published in the U.S. Below is a bar graph representing the output of new mass market titles and editions from 2000-2005:

According to Bowker, the average suggested retail price for mass market paperbacks in 2006 was $6.82, which is 14 cents more than 2005. Since 2001 the average retail price for mass market paperbacks has increased 51 cents, or 8%. Since these average prices were compiled from all mass market titles released by all U.S. publishers, it is about a dollar or so less than the suggested retail price we usually see from the largest trade houses. This is because the statistical universe includes children’s books and other inexpensive mass market editions. If we include mass market releases from just the largest trade houses, the averages will be more in line with what we’re used to seeing in our local bookstores. Below, compiled from Bowker’s Books In Print database, are the average prices for mass market paperbacks published by the largest twelve trade houses from 2001-2005:

• 2005 = $7.42
• 2004 = $7.35
• 2003 = $7.21
• 2002 = $7.30
• 2001 = $6.98

According to unit sales figures compiled by Publishers Weekly, the top four bestselling mass market paperbacks in 2006 were authored by Nora Roberts and published by Jove. They were:

• Morrigan’s Cross (2, 720,684 copies)
• Dance of the Gods (2,417,018 copies)
• Valley of Silence (2,403,329 copies)
• Blue Smoke (1,800,154 copies)

In addition to Ms Roberts, the other mass market authors on the one million plus sold list last year were James Patterson, Janet Evonovich, Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz, and Dan Brown.

As of the second week of September, the bestselling mass market paperbacks on both the Publishers Weekly and Barnes & Noble lists are:

• The Collectors, by David Baldacci (Grand Central Publishing)
• Inferno: Star Wars Legacy of the Force Series, by Troy Denning (Random House)
• 74 Seaside Avenue, by Debbie Macomber (Mira)
• Break No Bones, by Kathy Reichs (Simon & Schuster)
• Killer Dreams, by Iris Johansen (Dell Publishing)