Business Books—by the Numbers

In the last post I talked about the business book revolution that was ignited a quarter century ago. The next logical question is, how big is the business book category today? For example, in any given week, do people buy more cookbooks or more business books? More books on politics or more business books? Let’s take one recent week of actual point-of-purchase sales to compare different non-fiction categories. The numbers below represent the total one week sales of the top 50 books in each designated category, as measured by Nielsen Bookscan (and rounded off to the nearest big number). The results will prepare you well for your next cocktail party when the conversation turns to books:

Art: 11,000
Religion: 58,000
Political Science/politics (from Moyers to Blackwater): 67,000
Family/Relations: 70,000
Cooking 71,000
Business: 105,000
Self-help 156,000

In this particular week, well over half of the sales in the self-help category came from one book—The Last Lecture (by Randy Pausch, just as the political category will be dominated by former White House press secretary’s Scott McClellan’s What Happened when that book is released on June 6th). However, there was one other non-fiction category that crushed all of these—biographies and autobiographies. According to Nielsen Bookscan, that part of the bookshelf sold more than 250,00 copies in a single week, led by Barbara Walters’ memoir, Audition (that book sold close to an eye-popping 300,000 copies in three weeks). However, don’t count business books out yet. September—the start of the school year—and January—replete with New Year’s resolutions—are two of the best months for business books. Be sure to come back right after Labor Day when we take another snapshot of these key categories.

May 30, 2008 · Filed Under Book News

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The Business Book Revolution

The rise in the popularity of business books is what Peter Drucker might have called both a “recent phenomenon” and “totally unprecedented”. One of the most interesting things about the business book market—despite its incredible resilience—is how it tends to fluctuate with the stock market and the overall economy.

Take the lackluster 1970s, for example. During that decade, before the business book revolution, companies hunkered down, just trying to survive Watergate, an oil embargo, recessions, low productivity rates and double-digit interest rates. Few of us in business book publishing can name even one great business book to come out of that uninspiring period. The stock market lost well over half of its inflation-adjusted value between 1968 and 1974, and another six percent by July of 1982 (the Dow hovered around 800 in mid-’82). The bears ran rampant on Wall Street for 14 years.

The next decade did not start much better—but then came 1982. In retrospect, we know that was the beginning of everything. That was the year that ushered in the greatest bull market in history—catapulting the Dow from 800 to over 13,000 and then 14,000 by 2008. To repeat that percentage increase the Dow would have to exceed 175,000 in a similar time span. That was also the year that Peters’ and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence was published, as well as Blanchard’s and Johnson’s The One Minute Manager.

For years after that hundreds of authors pitched their book proposals by telling me that their book was “the next In Search of Excellence.” That was not the right way to go.

I didn’t publish a single book that was pitched to me as “the next In Search of Excellence.” Editors and publishers look for new and fresh ideas, not recycled books pretending to be something else, especially when they use a “phenomenon book” as a point of comparison. In my parlance a ”phenomenon book” is one that defies all odds to sell in the millions of copies, when the average business book probably sells fewer than 3,000 copies per year. Books like Who Moved My Cheese, Reengineering the Corporation and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are phenomenon books.

The next year, 1983, was another great year for business books, as Naisbitt’s Megatrends and Iacocca topped best-seller lists. Before long business books dominated non-fiction best-seller lists. Iacoccca went on to become the best-selIing business memoir of all time, selling an incredible five million copies, while In Search of Excellence sold more than three milllion copies in its first four years. Excellence was glued to the New York Times Bestseller list for three years, and the book became “the most widely held” of all library books—in all categories—between 1989 and 2006.

That was it. There was no going back. The business book revolution was in full sway, and business emerged as a dominant non-fiction category that persists to this day. (In a future posting I will include some firm numbers to back this up).

An interesting footnote to all of this: Peter Drucker, now commonly accepted as either “The Father of Modern Management” or “The Inventor of Management” wrote his first business book in 1946, after spending two years studying the inner workings of General Motors. That book—Concept of the Corporation—is what I call ”the grandfather of the modern day business book.” He wrote half a dozen books by 1982, but Drucker was never considered cool or hip, and none of his books ignited the type of sweeping movement that was sparked by In Search of Excellence. I will include many more facts on Drucker in future blogs, especially as we get closer to publication of Inside Drucker’s Brain.

May 28, 2008 · Filed Under Book News

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Hello World!

Welcome to my blog, which will really get going in the next day or two. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure you had a sense of what I was going to write about. Business books are my life and my passion. I entered the world of publishing in 1982, the same year that In Search of Excellence and The One Minute Manager was published. As you will read in my next posting, that was the year that changed everything. As an editor, former publisher, current editorial director (of Portfolio, the business book imprint of Penguin), I know what it takes to get published and what it takes to make a breakthrough book (although we are often surprised by the books that make it big). So I will be blogging quite a bit about business books, and will work hard to talk about the stuff that other people aren’t writing about. That’s because I have experienced the business from both sides of the transaction. I have been an editor for some 25 years (and have edited more than 275 books personally), and have now just completed my sixth business book (as author). It’s that unique perspective from both sides of the written word which I hope will keep bringing you back to this site. So if you love business books, want to get published, or want to understand the inside of the business book world, you have come to the right place. Oh, and yes, if you love Peter Drucker, this will also be the right site for you. That’s because the late Peter Drucker cooperated with me on a book that was six years in the making, INSIDE DRUCKER’S BRAIN. Meeting him was an incredible experience, especially for somone whose entire career has been about business books. My blog will be updated several times per week, so please do come back, and feel free to ask questions or add comments. I want to create a community of business book lunatics just like me. One more thing: if you have a friend, co-worker, or family member who may be interested in business books or Peter Drucker, tell them to check out jeffreykrames.com, scroll down, and enter their email address as indicated. Many thanks, and look out for my next posting on May 28th.

May 25, 2008 · Filed Under Site News