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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Thursday 19 July 2018

up-date: UK Book Sales Boom...authors see no financial increase


Interesting article if you are in publishing.  60% of UK book exports are to the EU which raises some very serious questions.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/19/book-sales-skyrocket-but-authors-report-shrinking-incomes

Ebook sales have dropped by over a third while the printed book, sales wise, has increased in sales for the third year running.  More and more people -all ages- are stating that they prefer a book in hand rather than some screen text.

The online comics in the UK are so small that they are not even measured but more people are, if other data is correct, prefer real, hands on, turn a page comics.

British book sales in Australasia continue to grow as they do in the United States.  Come the actual leaving of the EU there are going to be problems (in almost every walk of life) because there will be new taxes, export costs.  Basically a mess.

But here is the thing: online sales are not great (I can talk about that!).  People want to see, check and then buy (there are previews of all books on the online store!) and then buy. But those who pay more for a book on Amazon or even Ebay do not walk into comic shops. Those that do find their choice limited to an extent because it is Marvel, DC, IDW, Image and Dark Horse and there are no real Independent books. 

Considering the mess Brexit is going to bring to comic stores you might think that they would start looking around for Independent titles but there are problems.

Stores in the UK only tend to buy via Diamond which operates an illegal monopoly.  Store owners quite literally mess their pants at the thought of buying books from an Independent publisher.  Now, that Indie publisher's books are not in Previews because Diamond is only interested in the Big 5 -if you could order half of what you see in Previews...it would be a completely different, healthier industry. But you can't.

Diamond's job is to supply the shop OWNER with books that his/her CUSTOMERS want. Not to be told by Diamond, which is a supplier and NOT the store owner, what he/she CAN or is ALLOWED to order.  I've gone over this before. Diamond 'accidentally' botches up your order then don't buy from them. Seriously, it hurts a shop owner not getting books customers want but Diamond see orders falling -THEM losing money- they will play ball or someone else will move in.

Here is the biggest truth and shop owners have told me this: they do not want to rock the boat or cause problems and some are not interested in anything other than the Big 5 so will take damaged copies, delays and even (as I heard in one shop when the owner complained about a box of comics from Diamond being damaged -and I was a witness the damage could only have been done during packing) told "We're too busy to mess around. Return the books and we'll see IF we can replace them in the next two weeks" -when the books would then be "old" stock.  I was told "You can't argue"

Growing a set of balls might help.

Diamond is NOT going to help shop owners when the post Brexit crap hits. I'll predict now that even more comic shops in the UK will go because they just are not providing what British customers want. Ask why none of this is really affecting the US (theirs is another problem) or the European countries?

Get your business in order because unless you really want to fail in being a comic store no one else will help you.


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