Publishers are now seeing the run into Christmas in a very similar way to the recording industry sees the pop music Charts and when you look at the facts, it's not hard to see why the festive run in is a vital period of sales for the book industry.
According to Nielsen BookScan figures, one fifth of book sales (by value) are made in the run-up to Christmas. Last year saw 1,000 hardback books released at the same time, with 2,000 extra paperbacks, audio books and ebooks being released on the same day.
The most significant difference between the recording industry and the pubolishing industry is that books have a lot shelf life in, with the key launch date for books being October 1st.Which is not a reasonable release date for the record industry. The reasons for this difference is that books have both a much longer lifespan, and also that books rely heavily upon word of mouth and personal recommendations to generate sales. A later release such as the 1st of November would see books seeing a significant risk not being able to generate the required momentum before the key Christmas sales period.
With triple the number of books published this week, publishers face a tough challenge to get their products noticed. With limited promotional resources available, its is only the leading books from the bestselling authors which are going to get the promotional help they desire.
Carole Tomkinson, from HarperCollins is quotes as saying "If you get in the top five slot the retailers give you twice as much space, they push the book, they put it in their ads. "Our retailers really support the books that are the most successful, and success multiplies success."
So who is likely to be the best selling book this year? Fiction titles from Cecelia Ahern, Bernard Cornwell, Stieg Larsson and Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveler's Wife) are expected to do well. Some books have been release before "Super Thursday", Dan Browns Lost symbol was sold last month and did extremely well break records in its first 36 hours.
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