Publish on Demand Global's London Book Fair 2015 Report

1. London Book Fair Show Report
April 2015
PODG / SBPRA / AMI
Robert Fletcher, CEO
Executive Summary: As predicted, growth is in international,
children’s, and non-fiction. Certain sectors like romance remain
strong. PODG/SBPRA is spot-on with our publishing and
distribution services and global focus.

2. The following information was gleaned from
attendance at the London Book Fair Show, April 14-16,
2015. The report compiles personal observations from
over 5 years attendance, plus curation of pertinent
articles written by Publisher’s Weekly/Show Daily, The
Bookseller Daily, and Publishing Perspectives. All of
these fine resources offer newsletters that
independent authors and small publishers might
subscribe to.
Subjects Covered and Tags: Publishing Industry,
International Mindedness, Groupon, Romance,
Academic, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Children’s
Books, YA, Education, Cloud Libraries, 7 Figure
Advances for Self-published bestsellers, Author
Education, Non-Fiction, Spanish Market, DRM, Inquiry
Education, Ebooks, Subscription Models, Publishing
Business Models, POD, Audiobooks, Poetry, Author-
Illustrator… and a lot of information, statistics and
advice for independently published authors.
CEO Robert Fletcher
2 /

3. Publishing… Ebooks and
Print Books Working
Together:
Overall, a main “theme” running
throughout the media and show, is
that Ebooks adoption is leveling
off. The percentage of ebooks versus
print books is more stable now. There
is a renewed thought process for
publishers that once again emphasizes
great content versus great technology.
I believe this is because most people
have “declared” which they like, either
print, or ebook, and that is what they
want, and continue to buy.
The “take home” to you,
the author, is to cover all
platforms and be sure
your product is delivered
in the way the buyer
wants it.
3 /

4. Towards a More
“Fluid” Publishing
Industry:
Great quote… “Authors
can choose to self-publish;
agents can be publishers;
publishers can be
booksellers; the whole
industry has become much
more fluid”. (Bookseller
Magazine).
4 /

5. Continued Recognition of the
Importance of International
Markets:
Harper Collins announces new
offices in Holland, Japan, Nordic
(Sweden, Norway, Finland and
Denmark), Japan, Polaka (Poland,
Czech Republic, and Slovakia).
As you may be aware, SBPRA and
PODG have been aggressively
courting these markets and others
for our authors. You are already
there.
5 /

6. Jasinda Wilder and AG Riddle,
Self-Published Authors Gets 7
Figure Advances:
Big Girls Do It paved the way for Ms.
Wilder and Falling Into You hit #1 on
Amazon and #4 on the New York Times,
the offers started pouring in. Mr. Riddle
sold his book rights to Fox for a movie
before getting the publishing offer. Of
course this is what we all want at SBPRA
for our authors.
Robert with author John Berry.
6 /

7. Author Education at LBF is
Very Strong
Each of the global book fairs has
a unique “flavor”. London is one
of the few that has a very strong
educational program for authors
in their “Author HQ”
section. Authors are connected
with Literary Agents and attend
seminars on copyright,
marketing, cover design and
more. If you can make the show
easily, it is a great place to gain
further education.
7 /

8. Romance Writing
Contest by Kobo and
WHSmith – Deadline to
Enter 13 July
Mills and Boon will publish the
winners. If you have a Romance
book, please enter. We like the
combination of the three
companies and as you know, we
strongly encourage our authors to
enter all contests.
http://kobowritinglife.com/2015/0
4/14/calling-all-romance-authors/
http://authormarketingideas.com/
site/contests/
8 /

9. Fantastic sales growth is
being repeated across
most global markets
according to
Nielsen. Children’s book
sales have grown from
24% in 2004 to 35% in
2014, a huge increase
over 10 years. Reading is
the number one pastime
for children aged 0-10
years, sixth (behind
television, gaming, social
media.. etc) for children
aged 11-13 and almost
negligible for ages 14+.
Spotlight: Children’s Print Book Sales Buck the Trends,
Especially for 0-10 Year Olds.
9 /

10. Mark Coker of Smashwords
Offers 5 Tips for Self-
Publishing Authors:
Maximize Distribution (Interesting this is
number one).
Take Advantage of Preorders
Good Writing is not good enough.. get to
WOW!
Spend on Editing before Marketing
Hire Professional Cover Design. Robert with author
Derek Morgan and his wife.
10 /

11. Spanish Market Coming On Fast
and Strong
Mexico was the Guest of Honor this year at LBF and
Great Britain will be the Guest of Honor at the
Guadalajara Book Show this October. As you know,
PODG and SBPRA are regulars at the Guadalajara
Book fair. Why? Here are some statistics on the
Spanish market.
Spanish is the third most spoken language in the
world behind English and Chinese. There are 550
million Spanish speakers, and over 50 MM in the US
alone. Internet penetration is at 50+ % and growing
13% per year. The number of ebooks as a percentage
of all titles will surpass 25% next year. Many Spain
publishers see 25-50% of their sales now from Latin
America
PODG and SBPRA will make sure
that your books are there and also
be selling rights to Spanish
language buyers.
11 /

12. Oxford University Press
Announces they will “Self-Publish”
Technical Monographs and
Professional Journals.
For approximately $9000 USD, you
too can get your scientific writing
self-published by Oxford. If that
isn’t validation of the self-
published market, we aren’t sure
what is. Publishers are coming to
grips with “open access” meaning
that publicly funded research and
writing should be open for all and
that they are shifting to more of a
“pay to publish” model. Welcome
aboard Oxford.
We visited the town of Oxford
on this trip. Quite old and
impressive.
12 /

13. Chinese Books Will Now
Be Charted by Nielsen.
Openbook charts Chinese book
sales and that data will now be
available to the West. We have
been watching Chinese best
seller lists for four years now, so
you are in good hands.
China is always present now,
and we have many friends at
these booths.
13 /

14. Groupon Announces
that They Will Sell
Books & Ebooks:
Starting in June, this
“flash sale” site will sell
titles, mainly career
education from a sister
company. This further
shows the importance
of education and non-
fiction on a global basis.
14 /

15. 3M Expands Cloud Library
3M will expand to the UK,
Australia, and New
Zealand.
PODG/SBPRA is already
providing ebooks to the
3M Cloud Library, so this is
further good news for our
authors that are in our
ebook distribution
program.
15 /

16. Non-Fiction Publishing.. How
Many Ways Can You
Syndicate Your Content?
We are seeing quite a few new models
where non-fiction is “chunked” and
portions are sold and delivered by
partner and affiliate websites around
the world. One of our sales channel and
distribution relationships is a tablet
magazine seller, Magzter. They have
asked us to provide books that “match”
the magazines that sell best on their
tablets and we are aggressively working
on providing them that list. If your book
is in our database and it matches their
best sellers, you will be hearing from us.
16 /

17. DRM (Copy Protection) Continues to be
Debated
Does the publisher really benefit from
strong DRM? What about the inevitable
technology break downs that plague the
consumer-reader? There continues to be
a strong debate on this issue. We believe
that unless you are a global best seller, it
is better for your book to gain more
widespread distribution, and hence
advertising for your writing, than to ”lock
it down” to the detriment of more sales.
Statistics prove that many consumers like
to trial the book digitally and then buy the
print edition.
17 /

18. Inquiry Based Education
Is the New Buzzword:
“Let’s move from rote learning to
concept based learning” says
Ranjan Kaul, Managing Director
Oxford University Press, India.
PODG is now one year into
launching a “special digital
collection” designed for inquiry
education in international schools
such as International
Baccalaureate. We will be
premiering the collection at the IB
tradeshow in July.
18 /

19. Sell Your Mainstream Book
on Amazon: Keep Specials,
and Bundles on Your
Website:
Chris Robson, the CEO of
Propagator pointed out a
good way for authors to make
more direct money. Yes, put
your book on Amazon, but
keep the specials on your site.
Also, build community around
your site.
19 /

20. Poetry Section Debuts at LBF:
It is hard to believe, but there has
never been a poetry section at LBF
until this year. Inpress is the
company that is managing the
section and they have a great
marketing and distribution
program for poetry. We are
contacting Inpress on behalf of our
poetry authors. This is another of
the benefits of attending these
shows.
20 /

21. Wednesday 11–11:20 a.m. Exeter’s Collaboration
Suite: Ravi Venkataramani April 15 A Cloud-Based
Publishing Solution
Wednesday 11:30–11:50 a.m. The Emerging Digital
Demand within Martin Biron April 15 Vocational
Republishing
Wednesday noon–12:20 p.m. Top Publishing Trends of
2015 Steve Odart April 15
Wednesday 12:30–12:50 p.m. From E-books to Smart
Adaptive Content: Sameer Shariff April 15 The Story So Far
Wednesday 1–1:30 p.m. Gorilla Fighting Technology Alex
M. Dare April 15
Wednesday 1:30-1:50 p.m. High-Quality XML from
Microsoft Word Pradeep Jain April 15 Manuscripts:
Session for Book
and Journal Publishers
Wednesday 2–2:20 p.m. Maximizing the Value of Academic
and Borislav Popov April 15 Scientific Publications
Wednesday 2:30–2:50 p.m. The Benefits of E-book
Watermarking and Huub van de Pol April
15 Personalization over DRM
Wednesday 3–3:20 p.m. Audiobooks Are the Future. Ivan
Sabo, Michal Koci April 15 The Future Is Already Now
Wednesday 3:30–3:50 p.m. The Future of Content
Media Beni E. Rachmnaov
Sample List of Speeches
and Seminars:
There is a tremendous
amount of information to
be had at these
shows. Here is a list of
seminars in just 1/2 a
day.
21 /

22. Ingram adds
KSI/Korea to Its
Global Alliance POD
Program.
Interestingly, Robert
introduced them together
2 years ago. The idea of
the ability to print POD
anywhere in the world is
something I have been
working on for years now.
22 /

23. James Patterson Donates
$400,000 to Indie
Bookstores
The second round of grants
goes to bookstores in the UK
and Ireland. The grants are
for diverse areas including a
book bus, expanding
children’s reading, and
more. We applaud his
efforts. We are not sure that
they will stem the tidal wave
that small bookstores are
facing.
23 /

24. Devices Used for Reading
(Get Your Book into Epub
Format):
Two-thirds of tablet users
and one-half of
smartphone users claim
to have read at least one
book on their
device. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, the best
format for devices is
ePub, not PDF because
ePub is “flowable” and
PDF is more fixed. We
strongly suggest that this
is the year you get your
ebook/epub created.
24 /

25. Danish Reading “Subscription”
Service Doing Well:
We watch subscription services like
Oyster, and Kindle Unlimited very
closely. The reviews are mixed.
However, Mofibo in Denmark has
grown from 4% to 16% of the
digital market (albeit quite small) in
Denmark. We think that niche
subscription services will continue
to grow. Our IB effort is going to
be a subscription service in some
markets.
25 /

26. DosDoce.com Offers a Tremendous
White Paper on Publishing Models:
The report contains review and
commentary on 15 different business
models covering subscriptions, pay
per read, micro-payments, bundling,
app-purchases and more.. it is a great
overview.
http://www.dosdoce.com/upload/fic
heros/noticias/201504/new_business
_models_in_the_digital_age__bookm
achine_special_edition.pdf
Summary… publishing is a complex
ecosystem and is getting more
complex as the world goes global.
26 /

27. Audiobooks – Expensive to
Produce – Quality Concerns
The verdict is still out on
audiobooks for non-
bestsellers. The production
costs make the breakeven
point higher than most books
will achieve. This is leading to
a drop in the quality of the
production, which of course,
makes sales go down too.
27 /

28. Worldreader Brings
Ebooks to Africa (We are
giving them content
too).
Worldreader brings “free”
content to Africa. They focus
on education and areas
where nothing exists. We
strongly support their mission
and we have already sent
them a group of ebooks as a
donation.
28 /

29. Non-fiction is Eclipsing
Literary Fiction:
Large publisher rights buyers are
trending away from fiction to support
non-fiction. Why? Non-fiction is a less
risky purchase and has a more
definable return. (It is also easier to
market). Non-fiction ruled the rights
centre at the 39th London Book Fair
according to an analysis of deals
reported in The Bookseller Daily, with
Hachette and HarperCollins the busier
publishers. In total 36 rights deals were
announced during the fair, 21 non-
fiction, 15 fiction.
29 /

30. European VAT Rules Causes
Complete Confusion For
Publishers:
If you read the media, you will see
tremendous confusion about VAT
for ebooks. There are something
like 46 different sets of
rules. That’s why we like Asia
better than Europe for our
growth. (We let Amazon handle
our sales in Europe for just this
reason).
30 /

31. International – What Sells
In Brazil and India?
According to Bookseller, In Brazil, the top
sellers are legal an religious books. In Italy
a surprise bestseller is written by a
quantum physicist.
In India, their bestselling English language
author Chetan Bhugat is only behind
Paulo Coelho with more sales. His books
are described by critics as “massively
disappointing and made for Bollywood”..
who cares what the critics say, right? In
South Africa school books dominate,
typically by Oxford. Non-fiction books
about diet and self-help do well there
31 /

32. Illustrated Publishing – The
Author Illustrator..
Exemplified by the Diary of a
Wimpy Kid, and with a rise in
coloring books for adults, the
combination of doodle
illustrations is coming on
strong. Anecdotal evidence
also suggests that these books
are most appreciated by boys
over girls.
32 /

33. Russia.. Nyet
The climate for independent books (and
thinking) continues to worsen. We are
not spending any time on the Russian
market now.
Saudi Arabia – Yes.
The Middle East is devouring English
language books. (In one bookstore chain,
approximately half the books are English).
We recently signed an ebook distribution
contract there and we will be announcing
it soon. The main categories are
Children’s and Young Adult. Erotic books
are banned (even Danielle Steele).
33 /

34. London Is a
Great City!
(Oxford too).
34 /

35. Conclusion:
PODG/SBPRA is on top of these trends. Our clients are being distributed in
the markets mentioned above, plus many more. Our authors are winning
awards and in the right places for discovery.
Steady the course and now, we start preparing for the Book Expo in New
York at the end of May. Then, we have a break until the Beijing show at
the end of August which is followed by Frankfurt and Guadalajara.
We hope this information has been informative and we strongly
encourage every author to visit a book show like LBF if they can.
Sincerely,
Robert Fletcher – CEO
Boca Raton, Florida
April 2015
If you have comments or questions please email:
Lynette Chia - Singapore
Administrative Assistant to Mr. Fletcher
Lynette@PublishOnDemandGlobal.com 35 /