February Speaker Meeting Report

Posted on March 6, 2009 in Uncategorized

The first speaker meeting of the SYP year jumped feet-first into the hot topic of the hour – the Credit Crunch. More specifically, the evening, organised by new SYP committee member and social secretary Nicki Crossley (Orion), focussed unsurprisingly on the impact that the dreaded C.C. is having on the book market and how the economic downturn may affect aspiring young publishers’ current jobs and futures. The event’s attendance illustrated how important the topic is to SYP members and non-members alike, as all ages and professions filled Foyles’ Gallery and latecomers either had to find makeshift seats on the floor or against the walls as all chairs were filled by kick-off at 6.45pm.

The evening began with some helpful (and sometimes mind-boggling) facts and figures from Reeta Wilson, Publishing Accounts Manager for Nielsen Bookscan. Providing a statistical grounding to the evening’s discussion, Reeta offered an insight into the sheer numbers that are technically the beginning and end of all publishing and book sales activity in the UK. She told the audience that in 2008 alone, 236 million book units were sold in the UK. Interestingly but somewhat unsurprisingly, she also pointed out that the top five thousand titles in the Bookscan charts accounted for 54% of the year’s sales, emphasising at the same time, as well as later in the evening, the importance of the ‘Long Tail’ both to support core bestsellers and to encourage more unlikely hits to emerge from a list. Reeta went on to say that 2008’s book sales were down by 5.5% on 2007’s, despite volume sales being up by 2.3%. This was down, she said, to heavy discounting which, especially around the festive period, saw the market ‘devalue its products by 500 million pounds’. As the audience audibly groaned to hear the stark reality of the already-much-debated discounting situation, more disappointing statistics were unfortunately to come.

After describing trade non-fiction by saying ‘what happens here drives the market’, Reeta went on to state that it was the ‘only area [or genre] that was in decline in 2008’. Although this statement could also be read positively – that all other genres were not experiencing downturn in 2008 – she also went on to explain that November 2008 was ‘down at the most crucial time – down 17% on last year’. Commenting briefly on the fact that ‘[book] cover price is going up but discounting is bring the price down’ to a few select giggles from the crowd, Reeta ploughed on to 2009. Despite the worrying figures that show that so far in 2009 book sales are down 1.6% by value and down 8% by volume on 2008, Reeta ended her presentation on a positive note, urging the industry professionals in the audience that ‘you can do something about it’. Asking questions such as ‘Are you capitalising on media coverage?’ she stressed the importance of ‘making the most of what’s coming’, ‘setting realistic targets’ and perhaps most important of all: ‘if you don’t keep your eye on the ball you’re going to lose out’.

Next to speak was Mark Rusher, Trade Marketing Director at Orion Publishing Group. Fluent and seemingly at ease speaking to such a large audience, Mark focussed on how harnessing the potential power of marketing in difficult times is of great importance and how the role of (especially ‘young’) publishers responsible for marketing in any organisation is to emphasise this importance to their employers. Also, he stressed, it is their prerogative to find clever, cost-effective ways to best use marketing spend and resources at a time when the ‘powers that be’ may be tempted to scale back on costs and even staff in an area/department of which it is ‘hard to quantify the value’ – there are often no tangible direct results from marketing activity. Mark talked about how today’s consumers are ‘price sensitive, prepared to shop around and respond to direct marketing’ and that marketing personnel ‘need to be clever’ to tap into the whims of the consumer and drive initiatives such as ‘encouraging shops to do lots of local events’. He also, interestingly, discussed the opportunities that the C.C. may be actually opening up for book marketing, for example on TV: ‘terrestrial advertising has now become a financial possibility’. He also made the audience laugh by ending his slot by saying ‘I was a teenager in the early ‘70s when England was really f**ked’, speaking from experience to reassure the young publishers in the audience that ‘it’s not necessarily going to be so bad’.

The last speaker of the night was Eunice Paterson, Project Manager at Sage Publications, an educational publisher. Paterson took a slightly different tack and focussed on the moral and ethical responsibility a publisher has to their suppliers and service providers. In a convincing argument, she explained how she would not necessarily automatically go for the cheapest price when choosing services such as printers, as she felt a responsibility not to demand the price to be driven so low that those printers then ran the risk of going out of business, even if their production costs were also unavoidably rising. Stressing that ‘best practice is always best practice in good times and bad times’, she went on to expand on this, saying that ‘we’ve got to keep trusting each other and building relationships’ so that businesses at all ends of the publishing spectrum know and support each other to keep the industry alive and operational from a basic level. Concentrating mainly on the importance of structuring strong foundations and inter-business relationships, she explained that a best practice code now may be tomorrow’s insurance against potential disaster: ‘if you’ve built up relationships, those people aren’t going to let you go down the pan’.

The evening provided lively discussion, with three different enough perspectives on the panel to provide the audience with a great deal of food-for-thought. With at least fifteen minutes of very animated Q and A afterwards, the topic clearly got the speakers and audience involved with the subject, and the variety of opinion and viewpoints provoked some impassioned debate.

Rebecca Fenton