The conversion of the book

Photo: © Future Publish

The book market is diversifying: sales of books are declining, while at the same time books are being supplemented by new, innovative formats. This is having a serious impact on the traditional publishing world. Rüdiger Wischenbart, analyst of the international book industry, spoke about this at this year's Future Publish and warned that the publishing world must find long-term solutions to adapt to the new circumstances.

Text Boris Messing

"What is actually a book?" Rüdiger Wischenbart asked his audience in Room 5, earning astonished looks from them. Around twenty people had come to listen to his lecture "From Gatekeeper to Service Provider: On the Transformations in the German and International Publishing Business". Wischenbart has been a consultant and analyst in the German and international book industry for two decades. At this year's Future Publish in Berlin, he spoke about (not so) new players in the German and international publishing business who are competing with traditional publishing. With his provocative question, he summarizes a serious change of course in the book market that has been off the radar of the traditional publishing world for many years - and is gaining momentum. What is the background?

Let's start with the figures. According to the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, sales in the German book industry have remained relatively stable over the past ten years and are more or less at 9.5 billion euros per year. At the same time, the number of books and units sold is continuously declining. This trend can also be observed in the USA and the book market in Europe. The reason for the relative stability of sales is the constant price increases by publishers. However, the price screw cannot be turned up indefinitely - and that is a problem. Another problem, and this is closely related to the first one, is that a very large part of the actual turnover of the German (and international) book industry is in the dark. Rüdiger Wischenbart has an explanation for this.

New players, new formats

He brought a few self-calculated figures with him for his presentation. According to his estimate, Amazon alone (with Amazon Publishing, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle Unlimited and Audible) generates around 3.5 billion dollars a year from the sale of books, including audiobooks. This is roughly between the turnover of the global market leader Penguin Random House and the French publishing chain Hachette. But that is only one aspect of the problem. According to Wischenbart, a not insignificant part of the turnover (and sales), which also does not appear in the official figures for the book industry, is generated by (new) players who are challenging the traditional publishing world and redefining the book along the way. Here are a few more figures from him: Wattpad Webtoons, an e-book platform for authors, generated 735 million euros in 2022; Tonies, a German company from Düsseldorf, generated sales of 354 million euros in 2023; and Storytel, a Swedish company with a subscription business model, generated 307 million euros in sales. Together, these three companies generate almost 1.4 billion euros a year - and rising - and operate internationally. Above all, however, they show how the book market is changing.

It's about new value chains, new distribution channels, new business models and new target groups. So it's all new or what? Not quite. Let's take Tonies as an example. With its Tonieboxes, the company appeals to a target group for which traditional publishers have nothing significantly new to offer: two to six-year-olds. The company, which has been in existence for ten years, has experienced rapid growth. The Toniebox is an imaginative alternative to children's books and allows children to decide for themselves what and how they want to listen to. Or Storytel: Founded in Stockholm in 2006, the company is based on a subscription model for e- and audiobooks, a cost-effective alternative for readers of mostly lighter literature. Other providers with a similar business model include Tolino and Kindle Unlimited. They have all been in business for some time, but are not considered by official bodies such as the Börsenverein.

The romance sector in particular is on the rise. Wischenbart illustrated this in his presentation with a simple look at the top ten book sales in the USA. The top ten list of Publishers Weekly (the equivalent of the Spiegel bestseller list) for 2023 includes four titles that are not part of traditional publishing - all of them women. The most successful of them, Colleen Hoover, writes romance books with which she has amassed a fortune. She not only offers her books for sale on her website, but also the merchandising to go with them. "These are authors who have set a whole new value chain in motion," summarized Wischenbart. Another example of such new value chains is Rebel Girls. Founded in 2006 by two Italian women via crowdsourcing, the company is aimed at young girls between the ages of eight and eleven. The entire production - from the content of the books to illustration and layout - is handled by Rebel Girls, while sales are handled via licenses that they grant to publishers. The publishers' only role here is therefore that of a sales machine.

Publishers lose gatekeeper function

The fact that publishers are increasingly losing their gatekeeper function is also shown by the direct form of communication that authors who are not under contract with a traditional publishing house have with their reading public via social media. Wischenbart even goes so far as to say that today's publishing world is moving into an area where "publishing is becoming a service offering aimed at authors and target groups". In other words, it is no longer the publishers who decide what is printed (and sold) and how, but the platforms described above such as Storytel, Rebel Girls or Wattpad Webtoons. Incidentally, webtoons are another new variant of the "book". They are competing with the popular mangas from Japan. Note that one in four books sold in France is now a comic. The way people "read" has therefore diversified. Streaming, subscription models, self-publishing and the serialization of books are all challenging the traditional publishing world. Demand is changing.

Wischenbart's presentation left the audience with a few question marks. Where is the book industry heading? In summary, it can be said that the traditional publishing world is not in an acute crisis, but is heading towards a problem for which it will have to find solutions in the longer term. There is a new competition for new target groups and new book formats. A new type of communication is required. "There is a massive structural problem in the book industry, with a lot of air going out of the traditional segments," says Wischenbart. Good times for innovative players and ideas - and not so good for those who still see themselves as the gatekeepers of tomorrow, but are already losing the reins today.