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German market returns to growth

02.04.08 Anja Sieg

After three years of declining or at best stagnant sales the German book industry ended 2007 on a much more positive footing. Preliminary data released by the trade association Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, showed a rise of 3.9% in high street book sales up to about €5.2bn (£4.1bn).

A separate survey of the largest booksellers compiled by trade paper Buchreport, showed that the top 50 booksellers increased their turnover by 6% to €3.1bn (£2.4bn) in 2007. This ranking includes not only German booksellers but retailers from Austria and Switzerland as well.

The report showed that the retail market was increasingly dominated by only a handful of companies: Buchreport last year decided to cut down its annual ranking of the largest German bookselling companies from 100 to 50.

The two market leaders Thalia (€801m) and DBH (€711m), switched positions over the year with Thalia growing sales by 25% and DBH by 5%. The pair had combined sales of slightly over €1.5bn (£1.19bn), which gave them a market share of nearly 50%, compared with a 45% share in 2006. Both companies also have a large presence in Austria and Switzerland.

Between them Thalia and DBH, together with family-owned Mayersche--which came third in the ranking with sales of €145m (£115m)--have already announced extensive expansion plans, with 40 new branches opened this year so far, an additional selling space of more than 50,000 square metres.

The momentum in the neck-to-neck-race between the leading duo looks likely to shift to DBH in 2008. The book chain was just last week given the final nod by the German competition authorities to take over 44 of a total of 93 Karstadt bookshop concesssions on 1st July. Book sales at Germany's largest chain of department stores were estimated at €66m (£52m) in 2007.

Consolidation continued among publishers in the three German-speaking countries, too, but to a much lesser extent. The turnover of the 100 publishers that were listed in Buchreport's 2007 ranking was €6.1bn (£4.8bn), up 1%. Professional publishers had the largest market share (43%), followed by trade publishers (38%) and educational publishers (19%).

The ranking was again led by the former Bertelsmann-owned Springer Science + Business Media which reported turnover of €601m (£476m), down 6.2% following the sale of its construction division. The largest trade publisher was Random House on 5 with turnover of €240m (£190m), up 3.6%.

International Anja Sieg Germany

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