It's going well - but don't get complacent

Publishers like nothing more than to complain. Times are always tough and never seem to get better. But, whisper it, that hasn't been true over the past few years. Sure, making money from selling words is never simple, but there has been a remarkable recent run for the traditional trade publishing industry. What happened? What went so right, from an industry on the rocks just five years ago to the flourishing and confident one today? And does that create its own new dynamic - and its own new risk?

Principally this is a story built, as most commercial success stories are, on a recovery in sales. From 2014 onwards, the huge trough that built up in the years after the crash, which saw real term falls in sales across the UK, US and many other territories, started to reverse. If anything was going to deliver a surge in confidence, this was it.