The April issue of Locus magazine carries its annual “British Book Summary” – a report on SFF publishing in the UK. I admire and appreciate Locus’s amazingly comprehensive reporting on all things SFF-y from around the world, but as somebody in the publishing industry I have to say that this survey always bothers me.

It’s the source of the data. Locus explains that: “the data used to create these figures is extracted from our monthly ‘British Books’ column.” This means, basically, that pretty much all of the analysis is based on counting up how many books are being published by each publisher. If this is the measure being used to compare publishers, it’s rather like saying that McDonald’s are equal in size or significance to Our Burgers R Delicious* because they both offer their customers a range of ten different burgers**. It’s equally difficult to assess the overall size and health of the market in this way: it’s not just a question of how many burgers there are on the menu; you need to know whether McDonald’s, Our Burgers R Delicious, and all the other burger companies, have sold 1 gazillion or 50 gazillion of them***.

And I’m sorry to compare books to burgers, by the way.

Publishers are now able to analyze the book market in a very different way, using data collected by Nielsen Bookscan. This company tracks actual sales of books through tills in stores, enabling us to see exactly how the market is composed and what trends might be developing with incredible accuracy. For example, if one wishes to look at the actual market shares of publishing imprints in the UK (as I assume anybody reading the Locus article might be), these were the Top 3 imprints in the SFF market last year:

Bloomsbury: 26.07%
Orbit: 13.22%
Gollancz: 7.18%

(The very large Bloomsbury figure is almost entirely owing to the huge sales of the adult edition of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. In 2006, by contrast, Bloomsbury’s share was 2.5%.)

To bring things up to date – and to reflect the current market shares without the influence of a new Harry Potter release – the top 3 imprints in 2008 to date are:

Orbit: 23.27%
Gollancz: 10.94%
Corgi: 8.05%

Overall, the SFF market so far in 2008 has grown by 18% against the same period last year, and we are delighted to agree with the concluding remark in the Locus survey that “SF publishing in the UK looks healthy.”

So let’s not call the whole thing off!

* Fictitious company.
** I don’t know if this is true.
*** Neither of these figures is likely to be accurate.