Children's Book Market Recovery Continues
By Paul A. Paterson
December 1, 2002

Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire by J.K. Rowling

After a tough stretch in the 1990's, children's book sales have rebounded thanks to several new trends in the publishing market. Foremost is the explosion of interest in kids’ literature created by the J.K. Rowling phenomenon, Harry Potter. In 2000 the launch of Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire broke sales records the world over. Amazon.com, for example, pre-sold more than 265,000 copies of Goblet of Fire, dwarfing Amazon's biggest previous advance sale, 43,000 copies of John Grisham's The Brethren. Ironically, this windfall for giants like Amazon was also a boon to independent booksellers across North America.

"Harry Potter gave a one-time cash boost but also helped push people back to the independents," explained Hunt Landon, Executive Director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. "It made a huge difference in stemming the tide in losing our market share, and [we] are now gaining market share." Credited with getting many non-readers to pick up a book, the Harry Potter series has expanded the market for similar material, such as Brian Jacques' Redwall series.

Nickelodeon

The second trend is the explosion of books involving licensed characters from television, film and even corporate symbols. Beginning some 25 years ago with books based on Sesame Street characters, the landscape is now dotted with "brand name books" with Nickelodeon, Walt Disney and others forging strategic alliances with children's book publishers.

While branding characters has a long history, branding authors is a new trend—with a growing list of celebrities getting the most attention, including actors Jamie Lee Curtis and John Lithgow and journalists Maria Shriver and Debra Norville, crafting some very popular children's stories.

"The reason they have sold well in independent book stores is not because it is written by Jamie Lee Curtis," noted Landon. "It's because they are good books. Name alone will not do it."

Over the last few years, independent bookstores have begun to recover some of the market share lost during the mid-90s. "There was a period of time when the children's literature market was huge," says Anne Irish, the Executive Director of the Association of Booksellers for Children. "There was a lot more money available to libraries and teachers to purchase books."

At the end of the 1980s, indie bookstores held approximately 30 percent of the book market. With the arrival of the giant book superstores and online retailers like Amazon.com, however, that share dropped steadily to 15 percent. But in recent years, the numbers have nosed up to just over 16 percent.

"It has less to do with the quality of books being published than the emergence of super stores and Amazon," explains Landon. "Independent bookstores were in a tough spot in competition with the superstores."

Both Landon and Irish give some of the credit to Booksense, a national marketing program for independent bookstores. It has given independent booksellers their own bestseller list, access to gift certificates, and the book-ordering power of Amazon and the big retailers.

"We've learned to be smarter business people over the last five years," notes Landon. "The one's that are still here are here because they are good book sellers now. We have some technical advances we didn't have before, and some marketing advantages we didn't have before. Because of Booksense publishers are rediscovering us as a viable source."