Uncomfortable Statistics - Kathleen Jones takes a look at the current state of publishing
Uncomfortable Statistics for traditional publishers - Good news for Indies - The Big 6 are not so big any more. According to the latest figures for 2013, Penguin Random House came top of the table with a 24% share of the market, but its sales were down £342m (15%). All the others - Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan MacMillan, Bloomsbury, and Simon & Schuster were also down. Their total share of the market was only 59% - down from 70% in 2001. Is this a sign that their dominance of the book trade is fading? I think it is. But they won't go down without a fight, so - more turbulent times ahead. The end of Constable and Quercus The hope of many 'mid list' and 'literary' authors dumped by the Big 6 for commercial reasons has been a group of valiant and well-respected independently owned publishers still willing to take on authors for...