Management Practice Inc. (MPI) sponsored, organized, and conducted the I 0th annual Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Trends Seminar on September 9, 1994. MPI provides management and marketing consulting services to the publishing industry, in addition to a broader client base. The seminar was jointly conducted by Ms. Sari Roboff, Principal of Roboff and Associates and formerly Director of Special Projects and Marketing at Simon & Schuster, and Meyrick Payne, a partner of MPI.

The seminar focused on providing companies involved in publishing and allied industries with usable projections for 1994-98 for the purposes of strategic and business planning. The underlying data for the day was drawn from foe BISG publication, 1994 BOOK INDUSTRY TRENDS, which is revised annually and released each summer.

Sari Roboff presented a brief review of the publishing industry as it stands today. She pointed out that the largest segments will be among the fastest growing, but not necessarily the most profitable. For example, adult trade titles represent about 22 percent of all published books and are expected to grow at about 10.5 percent per year (see table). Its profitability at 5.7 percent is less than that of other growing sectors. In addition, Sari highlighted several sources which supplement the BISG data. These indicate that the BISG projections for all consumer sectors appear conservative.

Jim Haughty, Vice President of Research and Economics for Cahners Publishing, intrigued seminar participants with an innovative view of how trends in the national economy relate to different sectors of book publishing. Overall, books do best in the later stages of economic cycles, which bodes well for at least the next two to three years. Jim also noted that each sector of publishing has a distinctive growth curve in relation to the overall economy. He showed that the growth of juvenile books peaks about a year before the peak in adult trade, because buyers use their newly found disposable income to buy for their children before themselves. In addition, the growth rate of mass market publications peaks before that of sectors dependent upon the flow of tax dollars, such as Elhi, professional and university press.

Adult trade publishing will continue to be a growth sector for the next three to seven years, in spite of inroads from electronic publishing. Among the forces contributing to growth are a) increases in the 35-55 age population, who have historically been the greatest readers, and who have the highest disposable income; b? expansion of book distribution channels, particularly superstores; and c) more sophisticated promotion techniques including interactive shopping and infomercials.

The seminar culminated in reports from break-out groups that addressed strategic issues in six publishing sectors: 1) adult trade; 2) juvenile; 3) mass market; 4) professional; 5) elementary/high school; and 6) college. These groups generally concluded that the most difficult issue was to accurately predict the moment to supplement print with electronic media and to find the least risky way to do so.

The keynote speaker was Marty Maleska, a managing director of the investment banking firm Veronis Suhler & Associates. The thrust of Marty's address was that publishers, including the large, broad-based houses, will do best by building alliances to create and distribute electronic media. As a general rule, the publishers do not have the resources nor do they want the risk of developing and distributing multi-media products. Marty pointed out that there are many hungry and talented young software companies that would love to work in an alliance, but are just not prepared to be absorbed by a large publisher.

Copies of the materials may be purchased for S100 by contacting MPl at 74044.74@compuserve.com.