From Publishing Perspectives:
This week’s update from the NPD Group on the growth of the self-help books sector in recent years provides a helpful understanding of another driver of nonfiction in the United States’ book market.
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Unit sales of self-help books have grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR), NPD reports, of 11 percent in six years, reaching 18.6 million in 2019.
NPD’s BookScan report also includes a cautionary note of the kind that publishers sometimes don’t appreciate: you may be producing too many these books.
Despite the growth of the sector, the data shows, growth in the number of published titles in self-help outpaced the rate of sales growth, with the number of unique ISBNs rising nearly three-fold from 30,897 in 2013 to 85,253 in 2019.
In a prepared statement, NPD book industry analyst Kristen McLean—familiar to many in the international trade industry for her insights into the market, especially in children’s literature—describes what occurs when over-production comes into play.
“This increasing competition will make this high-growth category a challenge for new titles looking to break out and find readers,” McLean says, “as publishers and authors compete fiercely for attention.
“This is definitely a hot category for aggressive publisher investment,” she says, “because consumers have placed an increasing focus on mindfulness and minimalism in recent years,
“People are yearning for meaning, peace, and calm in today’s somewhat chaotic culture—and they’re looking for ways to slow down and unplug, which is part of the reason books that inspire people to do just that are doing well.”
And as Publishing Perspectives readers know, this is not just a US and/or Western phenomenon. There’s a similar trend evident in China, where self-help—especially in the realm of positive personality imaging and exploration of self-worth—features frequently on our China bestseller lists.
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Some 4.3 million units were sold in 2019, NPD’s report says, in the motivational-inspiration area, by comparison to 1.4 million units in 2013.
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Journaling is another activity that NPD sees recently “skyrocketing” in popularity. Accounting for fewer than 50,000 units in 2015, the company says, sales reached 700,000 units in 2019 in the States.
And in that vein, books that focus on creativity logged especially strong growth in 2019, per BookScan’s information, with unit sales increasing 43 percent over 2018.
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives