Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Report projects 8.3% decline in bookstore sales over five years; ABA queries methodology

An IbisWorld report has projected that bricks-and-mortar bookstores will record an average annual revenue decline of 8.3% in the five years from 2009-10 to 2014-15, according to Inside Retail.

The same report projects a 5.9% decline in revenue in 2014-15 to an industry total of $2bn, and predicts that ebooks and ereaders will contribute 30% of bookshop revenue in 2014-15.

The projections, which cover 2440 businesses and exclude online stores, take into consideration factors such as lower book prices, competition from online retailers and a shift in reading habits from print to ebooks.

Sales volumes are predicted to continue to decline over the next five years because of further competition from internet-based stores and ‘other external players’. The report also mentions that stores will be influenced by ‘anticipated changes to parallel importation legislation’.

A spokesperson for IBISWorld told Books+Publishing that the bookshop revenues were compiled by taking ABS figures for book and newspaper retailing and deducting figures for newspaper retailing obtained from the Australian Newsagents Federation. The spokesperson said that revenue figures were not obtained from independent booksellers directly.

Australian Booksellers CEO Joel Becker told Books+Publishing he was ‘concerned’ with the comprehensiveness of the data. ‘Since the ABS stopped collecting bookshop data in 2002, to take a category of ABS data that “includes” bookshops and newsagents and simply deduct the “newsagent” component to arrive at the bookshop figure seems to be fraught the potential of incomplete data,’ said Becker, adding that Nielsen BookScan and the Australian Publishers Association had not provided data for the report. 

Becker also queried the report’s prediction that 30% of bookstore revenue in 2014-15 will come from ebooks and ereaders. ‘In the more mature ebook market of the US, where more comprehensive data is collected, the sales of ebooks has dropped from approximately 31-32% in 2013 to the low 20%s in 2014. Where is the 30% figure for ebook sales in Australia derived from?’

‘I am not suggesting that the data collected is inaccurate, but I certainly query just how comprehensive the data collection can be with this methodology,’ said Becker.

 

Category: Local news