2012 In Review: Borders Liquidates, Sendak Dies, Digital Eats Print
- By Susan Halas
Borders books completed its liquidation.
Any way you measure it 2012 was a difficult and transitional years for books including publishing and book selling Be it new or used, popular titles or antiquarian rarities, the transition from print to digital accelerated. A host of electronic tablets, pads, mobile phones and readers like iPad, Kindle and Nook all showed strong upward trend lines and made ever greater inroads into the territory once occupied by the physical object – the book.
In the big picture of the whole collectible market the top sale of the year went to Munch’s 1895 work of art titled Scream which realized $119.9 million in May. That number was said to be more than the totals for all the book auctions in 2011 for both Christie's and Sotheby's combined.
The top selling publicly announced price paid for a book in 2012 was equally famous; it was Audubon’s Birds of North America which fetched over $7 million in January. Even that high point was down from a record $10 million paid only a few years ago.
Borders Liquidates, Barnes & Noble Falls, Amazon Thrives, Google Yo-Yos
This was a year that saw leading chain bookseller Borders complete liquidation of hundreds of stores and dispersal of thousands of employees. Its competitor in the retail book trade, Barnes and Noble, continued to struggle as it tried to adapt to the changing market place. A brief review of stock prices is instructive. Five years ago B&N stock was selling at $39 per share; at the end of November 2012 the price per share was just over $14.
As the market’s faith in conventional book retailing tanked, its bets on digital and e-book retailing grew ever stronger. Amazon stock, which sold for just over $90 in 2007, hit a high of $261 in Sept. 2012. Google, the mother ship of the whole trend to digitize book texts, went from a of high $693 in 2007, sunk to a low of $262 in Nov. 2008 and rebounded to high of $767 in Oct. 2012.
Still some bright spots
Little of this will come as news to AE readers. Many of those still in the book business as antiquarian or on-line sellers had a challenging year, but there were some bright spots too.
Other venues had some high points as well. ABE books, one of the leading databases for on-line book sellers reported on top sales monthly. Among the figures reported by ABE for 2012 were:
* $46,000 an inscribed first of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale
* $30,000 – Kafka’s Die Verwanglund (The Metamorphosis)
* $25,000 Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are
* $20,000 an Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
* $19,500 La Perrouse voyage
* Almost $17,000 a 17th century book on mushrooms
* $14,500 for Wydnham’s sci fi classic Day of the Triffids
* $12,500 for extremely limited edition of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
* $9,700 for a Dali illustrated limited edition of Don Quijote
* $5,750 for a signed first trade edition of Steinbeck’s East of Eden
ABE also noted a number of books on cocktails and mixology made top prices
(For fuller ABE report see www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/collectible-expensive-highest-price-sold/most-expensive-sales.shtml)
On-line sales at eBay also demonstrated some strong highlights, with categories for antiquarian, antique, fiction, non-fiction, children’s books and cook books. Top sellers in a variety of book related categories included Fleming, Oz books, Hemingway, and the first issue of Playboy with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. (For more details browse the link what sells best on eBay www.whatsellsbest.com/best-ebay-live-book-auction.html)
|
2012 In Review: Borders Liquidates, Sendak Dies, Digital Eats Print
- By Susan Halas
Munch's painting of the Scream sold for $119 million.
All time lows in popular taste including e-books
While old books soldiered on, in some cases with distinction, popular taste in new books, whatever their format, reached a new low. The trilogy “Fifty Shades of Grey,” dubbed “housewife porn,” dominated all the best seller lists in both print and electronic formats. Readers apparently could not get enough of S&M lite.
Likewise, young fans and the hugely popular movie of the same name insured Hunger Games, a teen age dystopian fantasy, stayed hot. Other brands with staying power included Harry Potter titles, Oz books, and the many incarnations of James Bond. In fact the Bond franchise never looked stronger with a new movie in release and a plethora of Fleming related books, memorabilia and merchandise to stoke collectors’ fancy.
While e-books are not usually within AE’s purview, it’s important to note that the biggest success story on Kindle was Jennifer Probst’s The Marriage Bargain, a novel priced at $2.99 that was the #8 bestselling Kindle e-book of the first half of the year. The book was published in February by Entangled, a new publisher that gives its authors higher royalties (40% on cover price for digital titles).
When asked to comment on The Marriage Bargain's runaway success, Entangled publisher Liz Pelletier said, "We were confident this title would sell strong for the genre, but not this well. Sales have far exceeded our expectations.”
The author’s own web site was thrilled to report that follow up title: The Marriage Mistake reached #5 on the Barnes and Noble bestseller list. This was closely followed by her new holiday short story, The Holiday Hoax. The Marriage Trap and The Marriage Bargain trailed shortly behind – making a total of four books in the top 100.
Deaths, Law Suits, Big Sales
Among those important in the world of books who died this year were Maurice Sendak, Gore Vidal, Nora Ephron, and Carlos Fuentes to name a few. The death of tech pioneer Steve Jobs, whose i-products changed the way book content was delivered, was also widely reported.
There was plenty of legal action in 2012 to keep the lawyers busy. Among the most notable was the end to a seven year legal battle between Google and publishers over copyrights and digitization.
Through it all antiquarians did what antiquarians do - they kept looking for the good stuff where ever it could be found. Two book sales that caught the fancy of both dealers and collectors were the final disposal of the inventory of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, CA., precipitated by the death of iconic dealer Peter Howard. Even more attention went to the disposal of books owned by Texas author-bookseller Larry McMurty, whose inventory took up a whole small town. The McMurty stock went under the hammer in August. Dealers from around the country drove in to attend and reported it all sold and was hauled away in a fast and haphazard manner.
AE ads hundreds of thousands of records
Back at the AE headquarters in San Francisco publisher Bruce McKinney and son Tom added hundreds of thousand of historical and contemporary auction and dealer records to the site’s existing database. These additions made AE not only the most comprehensive source for price, bibliographic and related info extant but also the fastest growing.
AE also moved slowly into the world of libraries, archives and special collections, offering free trials to library folk who may have heard of but not used the site before.
A classic example of why AE might prove a valuable resource to libraries came from Centralia College in Washington state where a 200-year-old book sitting on a shelf unused for years the was auctioned at Christie’s in New York in June going for $110,500.
“This is simply amazing,” Dr. Jim Walton, college president said. “A book that we were going to give away will now fund a program that will provide a great benefit to our students. All because it wouldn’t fit in the box.”
|
2012 In Review: Borders Liquidates, Sendak Dies, Digital Eats Print
- By Susan Halas
Maurice Sendak, creator of the beloved Wild Things, died.
Bottom Feeders Rule
But while the high end had bright spots and robust moments, the year really seemed to belong to the low end and bottom feeders as prices continued to erode and mega-listers and penny sellers undercut values.
Though this writer only got to the U.S. Mainland once in 2012, here in Hawaii the departure of Borders left a big hole. As of today, the island of Maui has only one B&N bookstore selling new books for a population 140,000 residents plus an estimated 35,000 upscale visitors a day.
Trying to fill the gap the local Friends of the Library group stepped in to offer not-for profit retail operations for used books in two shopping centers. This expansion was made possible by the abundance of vacant retail space and the desire of the malls to “have a bookstore.” The FOL here now has three retail outlets where donated books are priced from 25 cents to a few dollars, with most retailing for under $10. Widely popular in the community these shops are run entirely by volunteers who have the level of expertise that could be expected from an all-gratis operation.
Low End Retail
This writer, in the antiquarian book trade since the 1970s and on-line since 1998, sold at retail only once during 2012. That was a low end school rummage sale in November where all the stock was donated.
At least a thousand volumes came in the door. Most of them went right back out again at prices between 25 cents to $1. The highest price book, a 1943 Japanese-English dictionary published in the U S during wartime, went for a stellar $3.
Many of the books donated were religious and spiritual with an emphasis on Christianity. Religious books were also the sale’s bestsellers including bibles, bible stories, concordances, pastoral advice, lives of the saints, hymns and inspirational texts by the yard.
Besides religion other popular bargain basement categories were kid’s books, text books, language and reference volumes. At those prices there was no shortage of buyers. Vintage media did surprisingly well, that included old format video (VHS), CDs, game disks, language instruction, DVDs, and especially vintage LPs on vinyl. Despite the fact that many of the buyers did not own a turn table many still purchased records.
As a regular contributor to AE I enjoyed writing a story every month. The best response from AE readers came from an April story titled Tips from an eBay Power Seller, which was based on my own experiences. E-Bay tips.
2012 was a bumpy ride
This eBay power seller made it through the year, but it was a bumpy ride. My money is on 2013 to be better. It would not surprise me if some form or retail returns. People miss the book buying experience. But who knows if it will be called a bookstore, or if there will still be new physical books offered for sale for very much longer.
However, the desire to collect, sell, buy, trade and exhibit, albeit in a much revised form, seems to still be alive and well, if not exactly flourishing.
---------------
Reach AE writer Susan Halas at wailukusue@gmail.com
|