Executive Summary

Our book publishing industry is unmatched by other sectors of commerce in the momentum and amount of change taking place as we begin this new millennium.

This page presents just two of the leading factors that are creating this environment of change, along with a tiny portion of our strategic blueprint. American Book Publishing has formed the goal of establishing a lasting and significant position in the book publishing industry.

Industry Domination

As of 1999, book sales figures indicate that just five corporations control 85 percent of the hard- and soft-cover bestseller book markets. The largest company, Random House, now alone holds about 40 percent of all hard covers and about 30 percent of all paperback bestsellers. If, hypothetically speaking, a group of five additional smaller companies were added to the above list of five for a total of ten companies, the percentage of their market control would amount to an unthinkable 95 percent.

Stop and consider for a moment whether this is a good thing. Is this what we would want? Would it help to advance us as a civilization?

Consider some more facts about this industry domination. From these publishing houses, a mere 13 authors hold 37 percent of the fiction bestseller market, and 10 authors hold 47 percent of nonfiction hard covers. As an example, one author, Nora Roberts, held an 8 percent share with 12 mass-market bestsellers at one time.

What does this tell our talented, young, budding writers about developing their craft or pursuing a writing career, or of the probability of ever becoming published? Does this encourage an increase in our knowledge base or stimulate diversity in our ways of thinking or of perceiving the world?

American Book Publishing provides talented authors a realistic opportunity and an alternative to this status quo, 

In the Publishers Weekly article dated January 10, 2000, Daisy Maryles says, "It will be interesting to see if the players and authors whose names have been so familiar in the ‘90s will continue to dominate these charts. E-commerce, e-books, and e-productions will all play a greater role in the new century. Will these open doors for our publishers and writers, or will the winning combination remain the same: one of the big five firms publishing a book by a veteran writer that is touted by Oprah? We have no answer yet."

Microsoft says that it has the answer, and we review their timelines and forecasts as well as many other leaders in the industry and technology.

American Book Publishing is positioning itself to take advantage of the opportunities that will soon emerge. More than 75 of the top writer’s sites, the "seed bed" of talented budding writers, link to us. This provides would-be-authors the opportunity to become acquainted with us and to submit their manuscripts. 

Because of our strong commitment and feeling of personal responsibility and accountability for our earth's ecology, we stand out in the industry by setting an example for other publishers in ending paper waste. We require all manuscripts to be submitted electronically to us.

Industry Profitability Decline

Book returns for some publishers are now exceeding an enormous 40 percent of gross sales. The conglomerates, over the last few years, have gobbled up smaller, struggling publishers. Their size, however, does not eliminate all of their problems. Even while achieving large discounts in production due to economies of scale, their return on equity averages an embarrassing 2.9 percent. Because of this many of these publishing companies are diversifying into other industries. For example recently Harcourt Brace has bought Sea World a marine park in San Diego and Doubleday has purchased the New York Mets baseball team.

There are a great many factors that create this enormous rate of book returns, and traditional publishers have no viable plan to solve this problem in the foreseeable future.

American Book Publishing does not merely center its focus on the bookshelves of the major chain store. This provides a great economic advantage to our authors. The dream of authors having some of that shelf space more often than not is described as a nightmare!

The shelf life of a hard-cover book averages less than three months before a bookstore removes unsold copies from the shelves and ships them back to the publisher. They are then marked below unit cost and sent back to bookstores as "remainders." The shelf life of paperbacks is worse. It’s only six weeks before retailers remove unsold copies from racks, strip their covers for credit and destroy the books. Typically eight months after publication, only bestseller paperbacks can be found in independent bookstores.

At American Book Publishing we think that there are more options than settling for poor industry results in these areas and others .  

In conclusion, we have presented just a few of the thoughts that go into designing the many strategies in this executive summary that make up our comprehensive business plan and model for the 21st century. It would not be wise to tip off our competition by disclosing more here. Rest assured that we have performed an exhaustive analysis of the publishing industry’s problems and opportunities and have carefully devised strategies to build our market share in consideration of each one of these.