Norwegian bestseller fails to rescue Germany's year

The German book industry is nursing a hangover after a very disappointing 2017 in which not only the Christmas period but also the year as a whole fell short of expectations. The statistics compiled by trade paper buchreport, based on data from Media Control, make dismal reading: The year was down 2% by value, with December lagging behind 2016's figures by 4.4%. It was one of the worst Christmas performances in recent years despite a last-minute shopping frenzy.

The poor performance did not come totally out of the blue. Throughout the year book sales were struggling, with only four of the 12 months delivering growth year-on-year. The best months were April (+7%) and May (+6.4%), with February (-7.8%) and March (-9.1%) the worst offenders.

Media Control - which does not give unit sales or euro figures for its totals - covers the book market as a whole including online shops, department stores and travel bookstores. Among the channels, brick-and-mortar bookshops are by far the largest with a market share of over 50%. But the mood among those booksellers is grim because they fared worse than the competition: sales by value declined 3.3% and by volume at an even more alarming 5.3%. Had it not been for rising book prices the overall picture would have been even bleaker.

The pricing of books has been a major issue in Germany for some years. That the average selling price rose by 1.7% in the last 12 months is seen as a clear sign that publishers have finally come to acknowledge what booksellers have long been demanding. A trend to break the traditional price barriers of €9.99 for mass-market paperbacks and €19.99 for hardbacks, and increasingly get rid of .99 prices in favour of cleaner numbers, is gathering pace. Of the latest top 20 Der Spiegle hardback fiction bestsellers, nine are priced above €20.00, with Ken Follett's latest Kingsbridge novel Das Fundament der Ewigkeit setting the tone at a whopping €36.00.

According to booksellers, Christmas sales were spread over a wide range of titles from established authors including Follett, Dan Brown and German crime specialist Sebastian Fitzek. But the most successful book – and also the biggest surprise of the year - came from a debut author form Norway: Maja Lunde’s eco-novel Die Geschichte der Bienen (The History of Bees) was published by btb in March, immediately entered the Spiegel bestsellers, in 37th place, and since April has never been out of the top 10, including 14 weeks as number one.