Might there be a positive correlation between the growth in book title output and the GDP growth for a country?. On the one hand, a growing economy and growing GDP creates a demand for more educated and knowledgeable persons in the workforce thereby driving demand for books (as a source of knowledge), and on the other hand a growing GDP results in increasing incomes and increasing consumption expenditure for various products, including books.
The following graphic which presents a map of the title output and GDP per capita for various European Countries (source: The Economics of Books , p 53) suggests a correlation.
The GDP per capita is on a scale of thousands of dollars.
Comparing the growth in GDP per capita and the number of book titles published per capita over the past few decades in various mature publishing markets (U.S.A, U.K., Britain, France and Germany) with the GDP per capita and the number of titles published per capita today in India and China, provides some food for thought.
The following comparative chart (using data that I compiled from various sources) throws some light on the trends. The data are taken from the following sources.
- The book title output in USA and the titles published per capita in USA using the title output data and population data (Source: Best and Worst of Times: Changing Business of Trade Books 1975-2002, p9 - based on data from Bowker Annuals)
- The GDP per capita for USA (Source: Louis D. Johnston and Samuel H. Williamson, "The Annual Real and Nominal GDP for the United States, 1790 - Present." Economic History Services, July 27, 2007)
- The GDP per capita for various countries (Source: EconStats - GDP based on PPP per capita GDP)
- Book title output in India (Source: The Book Industry in India - Context, Challenge and Strategy, Preface - sadly, there are no authentic statistics on book title output or sales for the Indian publishing market)
The original source of the U.S. book title output data explains the technical reason for the big surge
in title output in 1997, arising out of far more comprehensive cataloguing by Bowker.
The growth in per capita book title output in America increased from about 7.6 per 100,000 people in 1950 to 43.2 per 100,000 in 2000.
In the same period, the corresponding figures for Britain increased from about 19.8 in 1950 to 212.2 in 2000. The per capita book title output per 100,000 people was about 100 for Germany and 87 for France in the year 2000.
Comparing the major publishing markets to India and China, there's an order of magnitude difference. It was estimated that about 70,000 titles were published across all languages in India in 2004 - resulting in a per capita book title output of about 6.3 per 100,000 for India. The per capita book title output per 100,000 was 9.9 for China in 2005.
For perspective, the whole of Europe with a population of about 457 million, put out 484,970 new titles in 2004 - a per capita book title ouput of 106 per 100,000 people. There were 3.9 million titles in print in Europe in 2004. (Source: European Book Publishing Statistics 2004)
India needs an order of magnitude growth in book title output (about 700,000 new titles published per year across all Indian languages and English) to reach current per capital book title ouput levels in the U.S., let alone catching up with the current levels in Britain, France or Germany.
Looking at the trends in per capita GDP growth over the last 25 years, the per capita GDP of India is near about that of the U.S. in the early 1960s. With India set for a GDP growth rate of about 8-10% per year, the book title output per capita is also likely to experience explosive growth over the next 20-25 years. Income levels are rising, consumption is booming and book sales have been growing steadily at 30% per year, even without much marketing by the trade. With half of India's population under 25 years of age, the demand for knowledge-oriented (non-fiction) books will explode in the coming years fuelled both by new entrants into the workforce as well as those already in the workforce, all keen on advancing their career prospects.
If the growth in per capita book title output is correlated to per capita GDP, then the growth in title output in India has to be led by the growth in indian language publishing rather than English language publishing for the simple reason that about 90-95% of the Indian population cannot read English. The findings of the National Readership Survey 2006 clearly show that the growth in the circulation/readership of newspapers in India is being driven by the Indian language newspapers.
- Over the last 3 years the number of readers of dailies and magazines put together among those aged 12 years and above has grown from 216 mn to 222 mn - a growth of almost 3% over last year.
- ... vernacular dailies have grown from 191.0 million readers to 203.6 million while English dailies have stagnated at around 21 million.
- As a proportion however, press reach has stabilized in urban India - at 45%. Press reach in rural India has also stayed the same at 19% -- needless to say, on a much larger population base. The number of readers in rural India (110 million) is now roughly equal to that in urban India (112 million).
- There is still significant scope for growth, as 359 million people who can read and understand any language do not read any publication. Of this 359 million, 68% read Hindi. It is not just affordability that is a constraint, since 20 million of these literate non-readers belong to the upscale SEC A and B segments.
- The time spent reading has remained the same - at 39 minutes daily on an average per day over the last year. But there has been increase in urban India (from 41 to 44 minutes daily) and decrease in rural India (from 36 to 35 minutes daily).
All these current newspaper readers and those likely to turn readers over the next decade are all potential book readers.
Our experience at New Horizon Media, over the past three years, with book publishing in Tamil indicates that the sizeable population of about 40 million literates in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu are hungry for knowledge at affordable prices (an average per copy price of about than Rs. 80 or US$2 per copy). We believe it is just the same for the 600-800 million literates across all other major Indian languages across the country.
The book publishing opportunity in India is multi-language and pan-Indian. Our aim at New Horizon Media is to publish over time in all the major Indian languages including English (which is just as much an Indian language today). Apart from publishing in Tamil, we now publish in Malayalam and English too.
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