Guide Books

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The FT carried an article last week, which drew on information from Nielsen BookScan about the decline in guidebook sales in Britain and concluded “if the current rate of decline continues, the final guidebook will be sold in less than seven years’ time”.

It also quoted that The Rough Guide to France, which sold 11,493 copies in 2008 fell by 45% to a sale of 6,561 in 2009 and the article went on to point out that the average sale of each guide book title from the leading five publishers was around 1,500 copies.

More and more, apparently, people are finding their info online or in Apps and some publishers (such as Nota Bene) have decided as a result to abandon print formats for their publications altogether.

Why am I telling you all this?

Clearly we are watching developments in the travel book business with interest, because of our own growing success with our Speak the Culture series. We seem to be bucking the trend and achieving some success with title sales. Fortunately, they are not guide books as such, but are a different way of exploring the culture of a country.

What we will do is pursue online, e-book and other applications, which will bring the fascinating mix of cultural information that is packed into each of the Speak the Culture books to as wide a range of people, in as wide a range of formats, as it is prudent and effective so to do.

Posted on 10th August 2010 by Neil Thomas • Permalink

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