Future Perfect Publishing

BookExpo America included the usual reports of industry sales and projections for the coming years.  Here are some highlights, as reported in Publishers Weekly, from the Book Industry Study Group BISG) which released its projections for 2007 book sales and beyond. 

• Book sales are expected to increase a total of 4.1% in 2007, to $39.65 billion.  The biggest gains are expected to come in the juvenile hardcover segment and the elementary / high school segment.
• The BISG forecast total book sales rose 3.1% last year, to $38.08 billion. Trade sales, which include the adult, juvenile and mass market segments, rose 3.3%, to $14.47 billion. Unit trade sales in 2006 were up 0.4%, to 2.26 billion. Unit sales in the juvenile hardcover segment are projected to rise 6.5% this year, but the forecast calls for
• Unit trade sales are projected to increase by less than 1% annually over the next five years. Between 2005 and 2011, unit sales are projected to increase at a 0.5% compound annual rate, while sales are forecast to grow at a 2.8% annual rate.
• BISG estimates sales for the entire industry will hit $45.2 billion in 2011, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 3.4%. The religious and elementary / high school segments will have the strongest gains through 2011, with an average growth rate of 4.9%.

Projected Overall Book Sales 2006-2007 ($ in millions)

The nation’s three largest bookstore chains also reported first quarter sales results:

• Sales rose 2.4%, to $2.15 billion.
• Barnes & Noble had the strongest quarter with sales up 2.8%, while Borders Group and Books-A-Million both reported a sales gain of 2.1%.
• In addition to posting the largest sales increase among the big three, Barnes & Noble was the only one to report an increase in same-store sales in the period, with comp store sales up 1.7% compared to a decline of 1.9% at Borders’s domestic superstores and a 0.5% decrease at Books-a-Million.  Books-a-Million however, was the only chain to report an increase in net income, up 40% in the quarter, while the net loss at Borders deepened to $35.9 million from $20.2 million, and Barnes & Noble had a loss of $1.7 million compared to profits of $10 million in last year’s first quarter.

Bookstore Chain Sales, 2006-2007 ($ in millions)

One interesting note.  BISG included numbers from smaller publishers (defined as under $50 million) and these appeared to help boost the overall sales numbers into positive territory.  The  Association of American Publishers (AAP) also reported sales figures, but focused primarily on sales at larger publishers.  Its report showed declines in many categories, including as juvenile and elementary / high school books.  This discrepancy between the BISG and AAP sales projections could be evidence that smaller presses are breathing life into the book industry. 

In earlier posts,  I’ve talked about the advantages for independent publishers of using blog networks.  One of the key advantages is that a group of related blogs can provide comprehensive and overlapping (but not duplicate) topic coverage for a given subject area thus potentially capturing a larger audience.  Audience paths through the blog network’s content can point to good book publishing candidates.

In the world of baseball statistics, a new understanding of the interrelationship of player and team performance is emerging  from the mountains of statistics compiled over nearly 150 years.  There are numerous metrics you can employ to measure the growth and impact of a single blog.  But when it comes to blog networks, there is considerably less available guidance. 

Below are a few analytics I propose as a kind of scorecard for a blog network.   (Note:  In the metrics below, “in-network” means occurring on one of the blogs in the network and “topic” refers to a category label on any blog in the network.  A “referral” is a path taken by a visitor from one point in the blog network to another point in the network.) 

Topic strength = (number of topic page views) / (total in-network page views)

This shows the overall percentage of views being captured by posts in a particular category.  In a sense it shows which topics are “hot.”  A proxy for this could also be visitor comments, but since comments are less frequent, views are more reliable.

Synergy of topic A with topic B = (number of referrals from topic B to topic A) / (total in-network neferrals)

This shows how one topic can refer a visitor to another topic either in the same or a different blog within the network.  Two topics which show a highly synergistic relationship are important clues to audience interests.  (Note that the synergy of topic A with topic B is not necessarily equally to the syngergy of topic B with topic A.)

Audience momentum = % increase in unique page views

Topic momentum = % increase in topic page views

Audience engagement = Average time in-network per visit

The more time a visitor spends in the network, generally the more they are engaged by the content they find there. 

Network efficiency = Average in-network page views per visit

This shows the amount of content being consumed during a visit.  It demonstrate the ability of the network to provide the visitor with compelling content and keep them in its member blogs.

These metrics collectively show how good the network is at capturing and building an audience around a given subject.  I would welcome other input on blog network analytics.