Australian market news: Publishers welcome survival of key online bookseller

As the Australian book trade approaches the crucial Christmas bookselling period, publishers do so with some relief that a key local channel to market has survived to sell books in Christmas 2024.

Booktopia is an Australian-owned online-only bookseller established in 2004 and publicly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2020. When it entered voluntary administration earlier this year, many in the industry assumed it was the end for the local online bookseller. Booktopia had previously announced plans for a substantial restructure, including considering at least 50 roles for redundancy, and its CEO had resigned. Its half-year revenue to 31 December was down 21% compared to the corresponding period a year prior, and its market capitalisation had dropped to $10.3 million, down from a market capitalisation of $315.8 million at the time of its initial public offering.

The book trade speculated on what business might want to take over Booktopia’s brand new customer fulfilment centre—associated costs for which were widely blamed for its financial difficulties—and the head of Australia’s booksellers association (BookPeople) Robbie Egan wished the association had the wherewithal to take it on. Meanwhile, the trade pondered which other bookselling chain might want parts of the Booktopia business. But many were surprised that the business was bought by someone who intended to keep trading under the Booktopia name and saw a future for it as a bookseller.

Publishers welcomed the sale of Booktopia to Shant Kradjian, the owner of electronics retailer digiDirect, who told Books+Publishing his team was ‘focusing on returning Booktopia to its peak glories’. While he wouldn’t make any promises about Christmas 2024, saying ‘this will take as long as it takes us to do business well’, the Booktopia website resumed trading quickly, and publishers are cautiously hopeful about sales through Booktopia for the peak selling season.

While the news that Booktopia would survive meant the bookselling landscape was spared a big shakeup, two major acquisitions will have implications for the publishing landscape. In August, the Australian arm of Simon & Schuster announced it would acquire Melbourne-based independent publisher Affirm Press; then in September, Australian publisher Hardie Grant announced it had agreed to purchase Sydney-based independent publisher Pantera Press.

Nielsen BookData: Romance, sci-fi and fantasy surge in 2024

In a report to the BookPeople conference mid-year, Nielsen BookData reported that its BookScan data for the 2024 year to date to the end of Quarter 1 showed a pick-up in children’s book sales by volume and big increases in several fiction categories.

Sci-fi and fantasy was up 85% with large thanks to Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros; crime, thriller and adventure was up 10%, with top titles including those by authors Dervla McTiernan, Richard Osman, and Freida McFadden; romance and sagas was up 11%, with Coleen Hoover, Ana Huang and Hannah Grace very successful; and general food and drink was up 8%, with Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats: Dinner (Macmillan) still regularly in the higher reaches of the charts after having been the highest selling title by value in 2023.

Overall, for the first quarter of 2024 Nielsen reported sales were up 1% by volume and down 4% by value, with the company reporting a trend of higher price points but discounting had led to lower average selling prices.

As reported in our previous market update, in 2023 Australian Book Market was down 2.1% in value and 1.7% in volume compared to 2022, with sales in 2023 at $1.33 billion. Nielsen reported at the BookPeople conference that of this 2023 figure, adult nonfiction trade was worth $482 million, Children’s, YA and educational was worth $383 million, adult fiction was worth $382 million and adult nonfiction: specialist was worth $79 million.

In adult fiction for 2023 overall the segment was up 5% in value compared to 2022, with $382 million in sales in 2023. General and literary fiction was down 6%; crime, thriller and adventure was down 3%; graphic novels and manga were down 4%; with sales of romance and sci-fi/fantasy driving growth. Nielsen reported sales in the romance category were 3.5 larger than in 2019, while sci-fi/fantasy sales were two times larger than 2019. In 2023, romance was worth $63 million in sales, while sci-fi/fantasy was worth $54 million. (In comparison these were worth $18 million and $25 million in sales respectively in 2019).

In trade nonfiction, which overall was down 3.8% by value to $482 million in 2023, biographies and autobiographies were up 0.7%. Also up was the atlases, maps and travel segment (+14%), while food and drink was down 3%, personal development was down 2%, and the arts was down 10%.

In children’s, the segment overall was down 4.4% in value in 2023 compared to 2022 (to $383 million in 2023). Children’s fiction was down 11%, the picture book category was down 5%, children’s general nonfiction was down 17%, while children’s comic strip fiction and graphic novels remained steady, and novelty and activity books grew (up 7%), as did children’s general interest and leisure (up 4%), preschool and early learning (up 3%) and YA fiction (up 2%).

Top 10 Australian authors of 2023

According to Nielsen’s report, the highest selling Australian authors of 2023 were:

1. Anh Do
2. Magi Maehashi
3. Aaron Blabey
4. Pip Williams
5. Trent Dalton
6. Mem Fox
7. Andy Briffiths
8. Scott Pape
9. Matthew Reilly
10. Megan Hess.

Pictured: Booktopia’s new owner, Shant Kradjian.

Category: Think Australian feature