Doomer and gloomer

Bad news from Pearson (aka Berkley/Penguin Putnam to those of us who don't have the corporate cheat-sheet).

According to the article, Penguin Putnam ain't doing so hot, but what's interesting in the article are these little stats:

Mass market paperback sales in the US have fallen 11.5 percent so far this year, on top of a 8.9 percent drop in 2004.

Penguin gets 1/3 of it's revenue from paperbacks, industry average is 1/4. Not to be catty, but didn't we all know that at some point, every American would own Nora's entire backlist and sales would drop off?

And this little bit:

Early sales of Penguin's first premium paperback, Minette Walters's ``Disordered Minds,'' published in December, are encouraging, Makinson said in February. The book stands about a half-inch taller than the mass-market versions and has a red circle on the cover stating: ``Specially designed for comfortable reading.'' The book has 29 lines of text per page, compared with 38 lines in the shorter editions.

And the last one, which I'd heard rumor of, but have never seen hard numbers:

Some Penguin stars, including Clancy, Cornwell and Sue Grafton, have registered a sales decline of as much as 35 percent for their most recent books, according to BookScan figures cited by trade magazine Publishers Weekly in February.

For example, Grafton's ``R Is for Ricochet'' had sold slightly more than 240,000 copies when the report was published, compared with more than 350,000 for ``Q Is for Quarry,'' the magazine said.

It's obvious the market is in a shift, but what's rather intriguing to me is to see the different approaches that publishers are using to shift attention to their books. This isn't just publishing. All the media companies are facing the same challenges to lure eyeballs their way.