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'A pretty good year for publishers'

29 December 2014

It's been a pretty good year for publishers. Bertelsmann revenues were the highest for seven years, although admittedly its profits were down and the acquisition of Penguin is part of the mix.
But children's and YA publishing is the driver of growth. American figures show that this year will be the best-ever for kids' books, with publishers paying more and more attention to this market. In the US ebook sales of children's books have boomed by an extraordinary 52.7%.

At the New York Children's Book Summit last week, it was revealed that 80% of the YA books bought by adults were bought for their own reading, showing a huge crossover market.

Jonathan Nowell of Nielsen urged publishers to pay more attention to China, pointing out that if the single biggest market was the US, at 26% of global share of book sales, the second biggest was China at 12%.
Finally, US publishers' sales revenue is expected to rise by nearly 5% across 2014 - not a sign of an industry in crisis.

These figures should not be taken to show that business is booming, just that international publishing has come through a difficult crisis and seems to be forging ahead.

 

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