Publishing Industry Market Update; Vol. 4, Issue 2
Is the End in Sight for Amazon?
No, of course not.
But the multi-category behemoth just posted its first loss since 2014…and to the tune of a cool $2.7 billion. That’s more than petty cash, even at one of the world’s biggest companies. While their holiday sales grew 9% from the prior year, Amazon took a huge loss on its investment in the electric truck maker, Rivian, whose stock value plunged 82% after Amazon took a 20% stake.
So, it wasn’t just me…
The other drag on profits came from Amazon’s pandemic-fueled growth plan. CEO Andy Jassy commented that in just a couple of years during the pandemic, Amazon nearly doubled the warehouse space that it had previously built over the prior 25 years. Amazon has announced a pull-back on many of those new warehouses, and last month revealed a plan to cut 5% of its workforce (18,000 jobs) this year. Another astonishing figure from Jassy that exacerbated the losses in 2022: Amazon grew its “last-mile transportation network”—aka, all those grey Sprinter vans—to a fleet equal to that of the shipping titan with the brown vans.
But with the economy faltering and in-person shopping rebounding, all that growth left the omnipresent online retailer a little too far out over their skis (please note the season-appropriate colloquialism).
Speaking of Layoffs
Last month, HarperCollins was the latest to announce a headcount reduction, this one totaling 5% of its North American workforce, which will result in a couple hundred of our colleagues receiving pink slips. Part and parcel (NOT a reference back to the folks with the brown vans) with the layoff announcement reported by HC parent, NewsCorp, was that its publishing arm ended the last three months of 2022 down 14% from the same period in the prior year. If Amazon is selling less, then so is everyone else (very much a generalization, but still true on most fronts).
Christian Retail Down
Our friends at The Parable Group released their annual State of Christian Retailing report, a survey of Christian bookstores, which identified a 2.4% drop in sales revenue from the more COVID-affected 2021. That decrease was less than NPD BookScan reported for print book sales overall, but that’s still discouraging in a year that saw brick and mortar as a whole, and Barnes & Noble in particular, realizing increases. And that revenue number is inflated by an increase in product prices by an average of 8.1%.
Silver-lining: 2022 revenue was still up 12% from pre-pandemic 2019.
Weekly Numbers
Here are the weekly results for January (even sadder when you factor in the huge numbers from Prince Harry’s “Spare”):
Week ended January 7, 2023: Flat
Week ended January 14, 2023: Up 1.4%
Week ended January 21, 2023: Up 1.2%
Week ended January 28, 2023: Down 4.2%
Take Action: Talk to a professional
If you feel like you need a time of encouragement with us, you can schedule one-on-one consultations with our agents. We can help you focus on what you can control and offer the type of feedback and inspiration that will get you to your publishing finishing line. We teach and coach first-time and veteran authors interested in advancing their careers, using our unparalleled experience, hard-won wisdom, and industry-leading strengths to help them reach their full potential. Schedule a one-on-one meeting today!
