PW: 1996 a Difficult Year for Children's Publishers

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Children's Features

1996 a Difficult Year for Children's Publishers
Jim Milliot and Diane Roback -- 11/3/97
Most companies saw weak sales, and failed to meet the industry-wide average gain
With just a few exceptions, 1996 was a difficult year for the nation's largest children's book publishers, according to PW's annual ranking. Despite the Association of American Publishers' statistics that showed an 11.5% sales gain for children's publishing in 1996, the top 15 publishers had nearly an 8% decline in sales. Only two publishers, Landoll's and Candlewick, were able to post gains that exceeded the average industry gain of 11.5% (sales figures listed cover the most recent fiscal or calendar year).

Golden Books remained the country's largest children's book publisher, with estimated sales of $162 million in 1996. Sales for the last year are not directly comparable to 1995 sales because the 1996 figures include only 11 months of sales, due to Golden changing its fiscal year from one ending on January 31 to a calendar year. In addition, Golden also suffered from declines in most divisions in 1996 as new management began a restructuring.

Although its sales were flat, Random House regained its position as the country's second largest children's publisher, with estimated sales of $125 million. Random is reportedly having a good year in 1997, driven by both its book and video operations.

With a 25% decline in its retail sales, Scholastic fell from second to third place among the top children's publishers. The drop in sales is due to the well-documented decline in sales of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series.

HarperCollins managed to eke out a small gain in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1997, while Simon &Schuster, whose 1995 figures benefited greatly from the success of The Book of Virtues for Children, had a small decline in 1995.

Putnam &Grosset, whose revenues include Price Stern Sloan, saw sales hold even at about $82 million. Also weighing in with sales of $82 million was Penguin. Looking toward 1997 figures, it is clear that the combining of Putnam and Penguin's children's divisions will push the merged operations to one of the top three spots among children's publishers.

New to the list this year is the fast-growing Landoll's, which had estimated sales of $71 million for its fiscal year ending June 30, 1997, compared to $52 million in fiscal 1996. The company said it is on track to have sales of $90 million to $100 million in fiscal 1998 as the company continues to expand in the lower-priced end of the children's book market.

With strong sales from tie-ins to Toy Story plus a good showing by The Small One, Disney Juvenile Publishing had a 4.8% gain to an estimated $65 million. Last year also saw DK Publishing's rapid growth slow considerably. Sales rose 5.5% in the year to an estimated $38 million, with the brightest spot DK's home party plan unit, DK Family Learning, where sales rose 53%.

Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt Brace flip-flopped positions in 1996 as both publishers enjoyed modest, across-the-board gains. The largest increase posted by a children's publisher was Candlewick Press, which had sales of $21.2 million in 1996, a 59.4% gain over 1995. Greater sales to nontraditional outlets was cited as one reason for the large gain, as well as strong sales from Guess How Much I Love You. Candlewick's jump pushed Little, Brown out of the top 15 children's publishers, with estimated sales of $19.5 million last year.
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