Sales of printed books in Australia have bounced back over the past two years after a period of steady decline in the face of booming e-reader sales.
Over the past five years book sales have fallen steadily but last year’s sales proved a turnaround with revenues picking up to $937 million, up from $918 million in 2013. The increase is largely due to the popularity of children and young adult fiction books and high-profile titles, such as Matthew Riley's thrillers.
Local book printers, such as Opus, PMP and SOS are all reporting a lift in sales, with an increase in the number of titles coming back onshore as print runs tumble and delivery times shorten. Digital presses are now accounting for most of the titles printed in Australia.
Australian author Don Watson, winner of this year’s Indie Book of the Year prize on Wednesday night with his book, The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia, reckons that much of the bounce back is due to the resilience of small local bookstores. In his acceptance speech he thanked the “little book stores all over the continent that keep the book and many hearts and minds alive.
“Writers and readers and publishers, suburbs, towns and communities, from toddlers to old-age pensioners, the whole country is blessed by them. They have fought off the monopolising tendencies of capitalism, the internet, mobile phones, and ipads. They have defied the general trend to instant gratification, fads, fashion and ignorance itself," said Watson.
HIs book won both the non-fiction prize and the Indie book of the year in the awards chosen by Australia’s 170-plus independent booksellers. Melbourne writer Sonya Hartnett won the fiction award for her novel Golden Boys. The debut fiction prize went to Maxine Beneba Clarke for Foreign Soil. The children’s and young adult book of the year was Withering-by-Sea by Melbourne writer Judith Rossell.
Nielsen BookScan in Australia collects data at the point of sale directly from all of the major book retailers.
According to Nielson’s latest figures, collected from retailers nationwide for the four weeks ending 24/1/2015, these were the top best-selling books in Australia:
- The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Vintage)
- The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney (Puffin)
- Family Food by Pete Evans (Plum)
- American Sniper (film tie-in) by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice (HarperCollins)
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Hachette)
- The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths (Pan)
- Private Vegas by James Patterson (Century)
- Gone Girl (film tie-in) by Gillian Flynn (Hachette)
- Girl Online by Zoe Sugg (Puffin)
- The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly (Macmillan).