It's so-called 'Super Thursday' for the book trade, as the official race begins to find this year's Christmas bestseller.
More than 200 hardback titles are released today, with a further batch of releases in the pipeline for a couple of week's time. Hot tips for the top spot include Jamie's latest cooking tome (his previous 30 Minute Meals has sold a whopping 1.1m copies) while potential cult hits includes works such as the Alan Partridge 'autobiography' and the Inbetweeners book.
The latest stats for UK printed book sales - which have hit the ?1bn sales mark two weeks later than last year - illustrate how the surge in e-book sales is impacting the figures. According to The Bookseller, publishers are reporting that e-books have effectively doubled year-on-year to between 9-10% of sales. Nobody knows whether e-book sales will accelerate and cause sales of proper books to fall off a cliff. But for the moment 90% of the market is still print-on-paper form, and the figures for this year's potential Christmas blockbusters will be fascinating.
On the subject of e-books Bloomsbury has just announced that it will sell its back catalogue in e-book and print-on-demand format. Reports of the move include a rather frown-making quote from the publisher's digital media director Stephanie Duncan, who said the price point for e-books would be similar to that of a paperback: "The reason being that we believe that the value of the book is in the work the author has put into it, and not the printing costs."
I beg to differ,
as I think the value, and perceived value, of a book is hugely influenced by
the way it is printed. And I generally feel short-changed by e-books. No cover,
no preamble. Yes they are convenient for some circumstances but there's just
not the same connection with the content. Of course, a book without the author's work is... a notebook. But thinking about it I've spent a lot of money on those, too.
Bloomsbury is celebrating its 25th anniversary tonight with a big party - if there's not some sort of display of its most successful books at the bash I'll eat my Harry Potter wizard's hat.
