Flexing Export Muscle Ahead of Brexit: The UK’s Publishers Association Releases Its 2017 ‘Yearbook’

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From Publishing Perspectives:

Pushing its position in book exports ahead of the March Brexit deadline, the UK’s Publishers Association’s annual “Yearbook” report for 2017—released today (July 19)—is touting an 8-percent rise in exports in that year to £3.4 billion (US$4.4 billion). Exports, according to the report, accounted in 2017 for 60 percent of the British book industry’s revenues. Europe accounted for 36 percent of 2017’s exports’ value.

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CEO Stephen Lotinga in his introduction calls UK publishing “a powerhouse of the creative industries.” Lotinga and others in the UK book business are working to establish the publishing industry’s standing as the country prepares to leave the European Union. It’s an important moment for traction.

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In the run-up to Brexit, this kind of hard data about the book industry’s contributions to the UK’s creative industries may well count more than any one year’s upbeat revenue figures. But, happily, that’s not to say that the news from 2017 is bad.

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As Lisa Campbell at the UK’s publishing trade magazine of record, The Bookseller, is pointing out, it can’t be overlooked that “While most areas of business performed robustly, domestic sales of textbooks to schools took a 12-percent hit, revealing that savage public sector cuts are starting to bite in the education” sector.

Of interest in this area, however, is a figure from the report that shows digital school books up an impressive 32 percent, to £27 million (US$35 million), “suggesting,” as the association’s media messaging modestly puts it, “that the use of digital teaching resources is becoming more prevalent.”

That may cheer observers concerned that sales of consumer ebooks in the home market—again, meaning in-country as opposed to in exports—are reported to have come in 9 percent lower in 2017, bringing their figure down to £139 million (US$181 million).

Perhaps never as comfortable as the Stateside market with ebooks—which is hardly to say that everyone in the US industry likes them, either—the UK industry on the whole has remained predominantly fond of print, and many will be pleased to know that print saw its revenue rise in the UK in 2017 by 5 percent.

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives