Something's going right for book publishing. How's this for good news? According to Publishers Weekly, Borders Group's stock jumped by 820% between December 31 and June 30. Books-A-Million's stock jumped by 178.8%; Barnes and Noble's by 37.5%; Scholastic's by 45.7%; and McGraw-Hill's by 29.8%.
Not to mention that, according to the Associated Press (as reprinted by Yahoo News and a host of other sources), Amazon has cut the price of its Kindle from $359 to $299. This, combined with the fact that Amazon hasn't announced that it plans to raise the price of its electronic books, offers hope that Amazon's profits will soar even higher (according to that PW article I just referenced, Amazon's stock already climbed by 63.1% in that period from December 31 to June 30.
Have stellar book publicity campaigns orchestrated by brilliant book publicists recently caused book sales to soar, transforming flagging sales into huge profit centers? I don't know, although as a book publicist, I'd like to believe that a whole spate of new, highly effective online book promotion strategies have enabled more publishers to sell more books during recent months.
I'd also like to believe that the economy is improving, and I'd further like to believe that people are reading more than they did before.
But, at this point, I care less about the reasons for the good book publishing industry news than I do about the fact that, finally, everyone in the book publishing industry, and everyone who loves books, finally has something to celebrate.
And did I mention that, after a day of severe thunderstorm warnings and even, believe it or not, tornado warnings in my neck of Massachusetts, the sun has finally peeked through the clouds, and we're looking at the best weather we've had since July 4th weekend?
So this is one book publicist who's in a very good mood this morning, and I hope your day is starting out a good as mine.
