Trade 'gave away’ almost £4bn in the Noughties

15.01.10 Graeme Neill and Philip Stone in The Bookseller

The book trade gave away £3.7bn in discounts in the Noughties, according to an analysis of Nielsen BookScan data, with the average discount creeping up from 16.4% in 2001 to 24.7% last year.
Across the decade, 1.88 billion books with a total r.r.p. of £18.1bn were actually sold for £14.4bn.

Last year, discounting hit its highest ever level, £573.5m, driven in part by highly competitive pricing of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The value slashed off r.r.p. has increased by 131% since 2001, when £248.6m was discounted from titles, offering customers an average discount of 16.4%.

Despite the heavy promotion of cheaply-priced non-fiction titles, especially around Christmas, it is adult fiction that has borne the brunt of value offers.

Adult fiction sales grew from £331.4m in 2001 to £475.6m last year, with books sold at an average discount of 25.5% over the decade. In 2009, the value of price cutting in this area was worth £200.9m, compared to £88.4m in 2001, though this was partly skewed by the sales activity surrounding The Lost Symbol.

However, even without Brown’s influence, fiction was still heavily price promoted. When the latest Brown is removed from the data, fiction prices were cut by an average of 28.9%, an all-time high.

Between 2001 and 2009, adult non-fiction sales rose from £740.1m to £948.4m. These books were discounted by 18.25% on average during the past nine years. In 2001, £125.4m, or 14.5%, was knocked off the recommended retail price. By 2009, this figure had more than doubled to £267m—or 22% discount.

Children’s books have also experienced heavy discounting, in part thanks to the success of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The decade had an explosion in children’s sales, outstripping the growth of adult fiction and non-fiction. Sales grew from £193.6m to £328.4m between 2001 and 2009.

The value of discounts increased by more than 200% to £105.7m during the same period.

Retail analyst Paul Smiddy said the only winner from discounting was the consumer. He said: “You could argue that there has been over-inflation in the recommended retail price. The r.r.p. of Jamie Oliver, for example, is pitched at a level that is not commercial.

“The same [discounting] phenomenon has happened with music. Creative content has been devalued in consumers’ eyes and I don’t think that trend is reversible. I would expect prices to continue to fall throughout the next decade.”