Dollar decline
How is the declining value of the Australian dollar against the US dollar likely to affect our book prices? You may recall that when the Aussie was last so weak, prices of most books were significantly higher. But the price of a standard trade paperback has mostly dipped since then – from about $32.99 to $29.99. Any possible change in the other direction is not going to be immediate, but it's fair to say, as one industry analyst did this week, that the price of books sourced from overseas by local publishers is going to be less attractive. There was a lot of talk about the supposedly high prices in Australia when the question of parallel importation was last on the agenda and that thorny subject seems to be again up for discussion. But those high prices did subsequently drop because of the increase in value of the Aussie, the rise of e-books, and the fall of the REDgroup, which owned Angus & Robertson. One major publisher admitted things were getting tighter, but said increases were unlikely as the perception was that prices in bookshops were at a ceiling.
E-books v print
Figures from the Association of American Publishers that suggest the threat of e-books to the print product is disappearing have been questioned by some who suggest that conclusion is premature.The figures were trumpeted by The New York Times, which reported a fall of 10 per cent in e-book sales in the US in the first five months of this year (print sales dropped 2.3 per cent in the same period), a plunge in sales of dedicated e-book readers – 12 million in 2014 compared with 20 million in 2011 – and a fillip to independent bookshops whose numbers have increased by about 25 per cent over the past five years. One problem with the figures is that the sales of e-books from only the 1200 traditional publishers are taken as indicative of the state of the entire US e-book market. Some argue that the market share of those publishers has declined while that of independently published e-books has increased. According to Ben Thompson, on his Stratechery website, "the implication of e-book sales falling while remaining 20 per cent of the industry is that the industry itself is in decline. Ultimately, in the grand competition that is the market for consumer attention, the fact that books aren't really improving while everything else is getting better means the publishers may in the end be celebrating the most pyrrhic of victories". Print enthusiasts got good news from Britain, however, where Nielsen BookScan figures showed the first increase in print books sales for seven years in the first nine months of the year, up 4.6 per cent on the comparable period last year.
