5 September 2018

UK book market continues to rise

This August our London office has been full of talk concerning beautiful books, primarily due to the stunning entries to the British Book Design and Production Awards that have been flooding in. The numerous entries to the awards seems to reflect the trend for the UK publishing industry. Indeed the Publishers Association reported in their 2017 Yearbook, published in July 18, that the value of the UK publishing industry had increased by 5% to £5.7 billion. It’s worth noting here that these figures come after a record year in 2016 where sales of books and journals grew 7% to £.4.8bn, their highest ever level, with physical sales up by 8% to £3bn.

Chief Executive Stephen Lotinga has spoken of the ‘enduring appeal’ to printed books when explaining the rise in print book sales, and perhaps the 2% decline in digital book sales which was amongst the upturn. This growth for print was demonstrated with total physical book sales income up 5% to £3.1bn and further supported by the physical non-fiction/reference book market, where sales were up 2% to £620m, and hardback fiction where book sales were up 31% to £97m signalling an ongoing return of consumers to a print format. He described how physical books are becoming celebrated again as objects of beauty. This is something we’ve always known, and when looking at the just released shortlist for the BBDPAs there are many objects of beauty to admire.

To take a look please visit www.britishbookawards.org/shortlist-winners-2017 

Charles Jarrold, Chief Executive BPIF