It's not always fair weather in the garden. While it's not unanimous, more than a few toilers in this publishing field point to gray clouds. Some say they are rethinking their programs; others concede that sales are flat, if not down.
But the public's interest in gardening hasn't totally died on the vine. "We have 32,000 members," says David Ellis, director of communications for the American Horticultural Society and editor of its AmericanGardener magazine. "Our membership has been going up about 10% annually for the last five years." Spring 2003's Gardening Trends Research from the Garden Writers Association indicated that even the impending Iraq war couldn't keep Americans from their gardens. The group reported, "Consumers plan on spending either the same or more as they did last spring [2002] on both ornamental plants/flowers (same = 55%; more = 12%) and vegetable/fruit plants (same = 57%; more = 13%)."
Even so, books have suffered. "It's been a tough retail market," reports Charles Nurnberg, Sterling president and CEO. "The combination of competition and last year's bad weather really hurt sales." Nancy Brown, buyer at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., puts it plainly: "There's a lot of overpublishing, and books have become so expensive. We used to sell big books on garden planning, but it's not happening so much anymore. A book at $30 or $40 is a tough sell. We have people who come into the store, look at a book, find the answer to whatever question they have and leave the book on the shelf. One woman even wanted to borrow a gardening book and take it next door to photocopy a page."
At Houghton Mifflin, home of the authoritative Taylor guides, Nancy Grant, marketing director for guide books, says, "The gardening market is extremely challenging. Our strategy at the moment is essentially to hang tough on our Taylor brand, keep it available, update when we need to, but Taylor's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, which we published last fall, is the culmination of the Taylor guides. We have no new titles under way at this point." Another sign that the category is somewhat less than robust is the fact that last fall Bookspan's Country Homes & Gardens Book Club was folded into the all-encompassing HomeStyle club (Feature, Oct. 13, 2003). "Although we now don't have a club dedicated to gardening books, it's still a major category for us," says Denise McGann, HomeStyle editor-in-chief. "We plan to offer a garden main selection every other month or so."
However, just because the climate is less than invigorating doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of bright spots to be found. Brown at R.J. Julia says, "The Garden Primer and Theme Gardens [by Barbara Damrosch], two of Workman's backlist books, continue to do very well for us, and The Well-Tended Perennial Garden [by Tracy DiSabato-Aust] from Timber goes amazingly well. We've sold almost 300 copies. At $30! We've even sold 30 copies of her newer book, The Well-Designed Mixed Garden at $40. There's somebody in town that recommends her books over and over again. People know her name. They trust her."
At Sterling, Nurnberg reports that this month inaugurates the Specialist series. "It's a new niche. A lot of it is about stuff to build in the garden, the hard part of the garden. This is one area where we've been growing, books about the garden being an extension of the house, rather than merely an outside area," he says. "Two other unusual books for us are under the Hearst imprint: Country Living Gardener: A Blessing of Toads and Country Living Cottage Gardens. The first is a collection of essays by Sharon Lovejoy about her experiences in the garden." The second, by Toby Musgrave, details the variety of cottage gardens that can be created imaginatively.
Niches or specialties are where a good deal of the action is these days. Houghton Mifflin's Grant says, "Specialty subjects, such as Understanding Orchids by Bill Cullina [Nov.], can work with the right pairing of author and design. Gardening books will continue to be a strong part of our backlist, and we're going to stick with it, but we may not expand as aggressively as we once did." Jean Huyler, buyer at The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Ill., cites niche guides as ongoing big sellers. "Flower arranging books sell well for us," she adds, "and one of the most popular books over this past Christmas was Trowel and Error [by Sharon Lovejoy] from Workman. It's for anybody who loves working in the outdoors."
"In the past two months, our bestsellers have been general reference books," says Maria Hoffman, manager, buyer and editor at Barnes & Noble.com. "Perhaps people are planning their spring gardens and want to get a general idea as to where to get started." She mentions Taylor's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants (HM), The American Horticultural Society A—Z Encyclopedia ofGarden Plants (DK) and Sunset Western Garden Book (Sunset). Hoffman has seen a good customer response to Paths of Desire: The Passions of a Suburban Gardener by Dominique Browning (Scribner), as has Ben Reese, senior books editor at Amazon.com. "It's more garden-lit or garden memoir than an instructional book," he says, "but it's really finding an audience on our site. One of the titles I'm looking forward to is Garden Insects of North America, coming next month from Princeton University Press. While it doesn't focus on the plants in the garden, it does provide a great means for gardeners to identify insects and offers suggestions on how to get rid of them."
Bringing It All Back Home
"Sunset used to have a long line of books describing plant groups," says editorial director Bob Doyle, "but by and large the books like the ones we did on trees, rhododendrons, cacti and succulents don't find the audience they once did. What's working better for us is the regional approach." To that end, Sunset launched a new series in January, The Top 10 Garden Guides, with Midwest Top 10 Garden Guide and California Top 10 Garden Guide. "We've done very large reference books on plants, starting with The Western Garden Book," says Doyle. "The latest is a new edition of The Southern Living Garden Book from the Oxmoor imprint. The Top 10 books sprang from those because a number of our customers were looking for more specific regional advice. We've got a number in the works for coming seasons. My idea is eventually to get it down to state by state. Gardeners look for that kind of specificity."
Kate Bissonnette, who works at Underwood Nursery and Garden Center in Greenville, S.C., underscores the regional impact, noting, "Sales of gardening books have waned, but our most popular title here is Landscape Plants of the Southeast by A. Gordon Halfacre [from Sparks Press]."
Cool Springs Press reaches out to regional markets in a decidedly determined manner. Purchased by Thomas Nelson in 2001, the house has expanded assertively since then. "At our height before Nelson, we were publishing 10—12 titles a year," says editorial director Hank McBride, "but in the last year our program has accelerated dramatically. We did 30 books last year, and we've had double-digit sales increases every year due to our ability to produce more product and Nelson's tremendous distribution to ABA accounts. Plus we were able to bring to the table our already strong relationships with outlets such as Home Depot and Loews." He adds that Cool Springs publishes "regional titles only and, as of next spring, we're going to have the entire country covered. We've got 160 books in print, including the Gardener's Guide series and the Month-by-Month gardening books. We also look for niches within niches, such as our new Ornamental Grasses for the Southeast and Tough Plants for the Northern Garden."
At Sasquatch, editorial director Gary Luke says, "Gardening is the ultimate regional subject. We have found a very stable and consistent marketplace for our books. The Northwest in particular, our primary focus, is an area where people are crazy about gardening. We have even taken a basic technique like pruning in Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning and put something of a regional spin on it."
Also on the West Coast, Timber Press has been planting new ideas too. "Our list has been increasing quite a bit," says executive editor Neal Maillet. "We'd been doing at most 30 books annually until recent years. We usually had a big mix of co-editions that came in from Europe, but now we're probably originating more than two-thirds of our titles here. We have plans to grow to 60 titles a year, including regional books and natural history books. One reason for our larger numbers, though, is that we have always considered ourselves an academic/reference publisher for horticulturalists. That means there is a large potential for us to reach beginning and middle gardeners, and for the last few years, we've been going beyond direct sales to become a trade publisher. This summer we're starting a new pocket guide series in paperback at $19.95, the Timber Press Pocket Guides. The first title is The Pocket Guide to Ornamental Grasses by Rick Darke. That's a pretty big departure for us, but a lot of people going to the nursery to buy ornamental grasses don't want to take an encyclopedia along with them."
Sales Grow Outside the Bookstore, Within Niches
Most publishers remark that nurseries and home stores as well as big-box and mass merchandisers provide them with valuable sales opportunities because a person visiting these venues to buy plants or garden materials may well want to pick up a book right on the spot and not have to search out a bookstore. Similarly, garden shows around the country allow publishers to display and sell their wares and to learn first-hand what gardeners are looking for.
"Some of our bestselling titles come out of the feedback we get at shows," says Sunset's Doyle. "We set up a stall and sell our books, but the main reason we're there is to have conversations with gardeners. Landscaping with Stone is one book that came out of such conversations, and it's been very, very successful."
"Our sales have been steady. Although it's very competitive, gardening is our strongest category in trade books," says Christopher Reggio, associate publisher and director of adult trade publishing for Reader's Digest Books. "Our list tends to have one major title, one all-encompassing title per year. This year it's Flower Gardening, which includes the latest trends—outdoor projects and outdoor living, miniature varieties of plants, incorporating wildlife into the garden. It does what our books do: take complex information and break it down into smaller pieces that are easy to understand."
Subjects that have now been enjoying success year after year—and that have prompted books from a great many publishers—are water gardening, container gardening and gardening with tropical plants (which are often treated as annuals in less hospitable climes). "Water gardening has really been picking up in the last few years," says AHS's Ellis, "with everything from very simple tub gardens to much more elaborate constructions. We also see a lot of interest in native plants and naturalistic gardens." "Water gardens have been very popular lately," says Reese at Amazon.com, "as have books on gardening in small spaces like patios or urban backyards. We've also seen a rise in popularity of 'master gardener' books like P. Allen Smith's Garden Home [Clarkson Potter] or Tracy DiSabato-Aust's The Well-Designed Garden [Timber], where an expert takes readers step-by-step through the planning and creation of a garden." Barnes & Noble.com's Hoffman also cites The Well-Designed Garden, as well as Garden Blueprints by Becke Davis (Friedman/Fairfax), Manual of Woody Landscape Plants by Michael Dirr (Stipes) and his Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs (Timber).
"I believe that readers have been wanting more titles on low-maintenance gardens and plants in the past four to five years," says Michèle Byam, commissioning editor for gardening at Mitchell Beazley. Her compatriot, international sales and marketing director Kate Newton, remarks on MB's focus on the latest trends in garden design. "For example, Paul Cooper, recognized as one of the most cutting-edge contemporary garden designers, has contributed several titles to our list—Interiorscapes, for example, which examines the popular practice of incorporating gardens inside buildings; and The New Tech Garden, which showcases unconventional gardens incorporating modern materials such as steel, glass and plastic."
DK, which publishes a variety of American Horticultural Society titles, has also been successful over the years with garden design books, says David Lamb, DK's gardening publisher. "We have great hopes for Diarmuid Gavin's Design Your Garden," he declares, "but year in, year out, our best sales come from our AHS/DK encyclopedias, the Encyclopedia of Gardening, Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers and the two-volume A—Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. Time and again you will see good practical books—either books that show you how-to or reference books that you go back to year after year—selling best. Perennials stand out as the number one gardeners' plant interest. Container gardening has a consistent appeal. That's why we returned to the subject with Paul Williams [Container Gardening] this spring."
On the other hand, Paul Feldstein, managing director of Trafalgar Square, eschews design. He says, "We avoid garden design books. There are just so many of them out there. I've felt that gardening has become overpublished, so we've wanted to be a bit more careful. We look for books that are more specific and focused. We did very well with Jim Keeling's Terra Cotta Gardener 10 years ago, so we're looking forward to his Flowerpots, which we're publishing this spring." While essentially a book on container gardening, Feldstein explains that it provides somewhat of a twist because Keeling is a potter and his containers are uniquely designed. "Our list of gardening books may have gone down a little in the previous two or three years," he adds, "but now that we've started distributing BBC Books, we're up again. We've weathered the storm over whatever recession we had, and we're poised for steady growth." To help that growth along, Trafalgar has linked hands across the Atlantic with Visit Britain (the British Travel Authority) and United Airlines in a special promotion based on the facts that 2004 has been named the Year of Gardening in Britain and that this is the 200th anniversary of the Royal Gardens in England. An all-expense-paid trip for two to England will be awarded to the American bookstore creating the best display of Trafalgar's gardening books, including The Royal Gardeners by Alan Titchmarsh and signage provided by Trafalgar. Photos of said displays must be submitted to the publisher by May 15.
One healthy new niche is organic gardening, which is straying into the mainstream. "We have The Organic Home Garden this spring," says Firefly publisher Lionel Koffler. "It deals mainly with vegetables and herbs, but what adds to this book is that it has recipes as well." "Organic is a coming trend nationally," says Luke at Sasquatch. "We published Ann Lovejoy'sHandbook of Northwest Gardening last year and in it Ann makes the jump from organic vegetable to organic ornamental gardening. There's a big interest in the northwest in not wanting to circulate more fertilizer material into the watershed because that has affected the health of salmon runs."
"We've had a solid growth pattern over the last five years. One category that always sells well has to do with lawns," says Ben Allen, executive editor of gardening and home improvement books at Meredith, which publishes Ortho and Scott books on grassy matters. "Even people who aren't gardeners have lawns." A new book geared to this audience is Better Homesand Gardens Yard & Garden OwnersManual. "The fundamental premise here is that we assume there is an existing yard," Allen says. "This is an alternate approach because most garden books address the subject from a blank slate perspective." Meredith's affiliation with brand names has long been a boon, and it's a direction that continues strongly. January's Miracle-Gro BeautifulGardens Made Easy by Elvin McDonald is the house's first title to carry the Miracle-Gro name. "We're excited about this because all the research shows that people have a large awareness of Miracle-Gro as the provider of excellent products for the garden." Last year Meredith published a decorating book emblazoned with the HGTV logo. "Now we're doing our first gardening books with HGTV," says Allen, "Flower Gardening and Landscape Makeovers. HGTV is well-known for its inspirational ideas and people do look to that brand. The books provide background information to help people get the projects done. A half-hour show can't do it all."
Small Screen Competition
Although HGTV may well be an attractive sales-inducing brand, it is frequently cited by publishers as perhaps having a deleterious effect on gardening book sales in general. Significant amounts of help and suggestions are given out gratis on that cable channel and on other cable programs as well. The Internet, too, has grown into a consequential medium for a great deal of garden counseling at little or no cost. Gardenweb.com, an Internet domain with a vast amount of resources available to gardeners, reports that it had about 1.3 million unique visitors a month in 2002. By last month, that number had ballooned to about two million.
"Books and magazines used to have this category all to themselves," observes Firefly's Koffler. "It's true that HGTV promotes the subject, but it also supplies a lot of free information. At Firefly, we search for books that are quite plant-specific, like Hostas, Reliable Roses or Lilies. We've found that a lot of the gardeners who buy our books are ambitious, and they want things beyond 'how to plant your garden.' There are enough introductory books. It's more challenging for a publisher to come up with books for a sophisticated market. I'm a gardener myself, so I do what I do for love as well as money. I want to publish books to satisfy my needs. Is the information clear? Is it up-to-date? The basic information about gardening is much the same as it was in, say, 1935, but what's new these days is the diversity of garden styles."
Upscale, Backlist and Branding
Rizzoli International has a major new book on lilies as well, Lilies: A Guide to Choosing and Growing Lilies by Michael Jefferson Brown and Andrew Lawson. Asked about price resistance to its richly illustrated releases, editor Klaus Kirschbaum says, "We have a positive outlook here. Things turned up for the house after Thanksgiving last year. The news over Christmas was that luxury items were selling better, and our higher-priced books actually did better than we expected. We've found that books with more hands-on information sell better, although Rizzoli books have to be beautiful and written with expertise, preferably by a promotable author."
Another house where lush photography is a source of pride is Clarkson Potter, where publisher Lauren Shakely says the gardening list is being kept purposely small. "This category is a real challenge," she says. "At the moment, P. Allen Smith and Ken Druse are doing exceedingly well for us, but beyond them, we look for something that falls into a niche. We cannot compete, nor do we want to compete with less expensive books at paperback prices. Price sensitivity is always an issue. People will spend $30 or $40 or $50 for a book, or they'll spend $14.95 for a paperback. There's a gap in the middle range. One of the major trends, and this is what has happened in almost every category, especially in lifestyle publishing, is that people look to a personality."
Dan Farrell, general manager of the North American division of Antique Collectors' Club, admits that it "can be hard to sell a book in the $50—$55—$60 range, although the primary problem is with real estate. Booksellers worry about shelf space and fear there won't be enough turnover. One of the surprises we've encountered is how well we've sold really expensive books, those getting up to $100. That market may not be the deepest pond in town, but it's there." The most expensive book on the house's spring list is Margaret Mee Amazon Flowers: The Diaries of an Artist Explorer, at $59.50. "That book has been out of print for about 10 years," says Farrell, "but this isn't really a reprint. It's a totally redone book. Her artwork and photos have been rescanned, her diaries re-edited. It's a book that works on a lot of levels from botany and the environment to travel writing." Farrell reiterates the importance of having an author with a name like Mee to command respect. "A known author makes a big difference," he says, "authors like Rosemary Verey or Penelope Hobhouse or Graham Stuart Thomas, whose book Recollections of Great Gardeners we're just publishing."
In contemplating the ambiguous effect of price, Susan Crittenden, manager of Powell's Books for Cooks and Gardeners in Portland, Ore., says, "Our biggest seller last year was Flora: A Gardener's Encyclopedia. Other than that, I haven't noticed any trends different from the seasons before." Flora, by the way, is a slipcased two-volume set edited by Sean Hogan from Timber Press. It weighs 18 pounds, identifies 20,000 plants, has more than 12,000 color photos and a CD-ROM, and bears a cover price of $99.95. "We sold through on that and we're waiting for a reprint," says Timber's Maillet. Both Reese at Amazon.com and Hoffman at Barnes & Noble.com cite the success of Flora, too. "Gardeners are not ones to skimp on materials and books for their gardens, especially the hobbyists," says Hoffman. Reese concurs: "Gardeners are willing to accept a higher price when the book warrants it."
Conversely, Brown at R.J. Julia is placing major orders for remainders. "Because of the huge price resistance we've found, that's what we're doing," she says. "A perennial is a perennial, and if customers don't want a book at $30, they'll pick up a remainder for $12.98. We stock remainders, face-out, in the gardening section now. Because of what's been happening, we've even thought about shrinking the gardening section." One spring book for which Brown has high expectations, however, is Warner's Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.
One of the traditional resources that publishers of gardening books rely on is the backlist, and a venerable paperback at a relatively modest price is one of Rodale's strongest backlist titles. "Square Foot Gardening [by Mel Bartholomew] is more than 20 years old," says Margot Schupf, executive editor for lifestyle books, "and it still sells over 11,000 copies a year." (Reese at Amazon.com says that it "has been a constantly bestselling gardening title for a long time now.") "We haven't experienced any lag in sales of our backlist staples," continues Schupf, "however it's getting more challenging to find strong frontlist gardening books. It's a challenge to find new hooks. I've been trying to bring more of a trade sensibility to our list. One example is Suzy Bale's Down-to-Earth Gardener [subtitled Let Mother Nature Guide You to Success in Your Garden]. It's a departure from our traditional books, although it's still organically based. It's a walk through her garden that is more inspirational than instructional. It's not necessarily a book for novices, but it's not a difficult book either. It's Suzy's voice, and we thought we could raise the price point [to $32.50] because of her higher profile." Rodale is also taking its first steps in branding with external firms. "We've done branded books with Prevention magazine for years," Schupf says, "and now we're getting into branding with outside companies." A Year Full of Flowers: Fresh Ideas to Bring Flowers into Your LifeEveryday by Jim McCann and Julie McCann-Mulligan is affiliated with the famous distributor of fresh blossoms, 1-800-Flowers. "We have a database of 25 million names, and they have one with 10 million names," comments Schupf. "We'll be able to market the book across many platforms, including direct mail and online. A lot of people think that direct mail cannibalizes trade sales, but that isn't true for us. When we drop 750,000 pieces of mail, we always see a spike in trade sales."
Cool Springs Press is embellishing its regionally directed program with a similarly new branding effort. "We've joined with Jackson & Perkins," says McBride, "which is an exciting effort that's giving us a tremendous benefit. We've got a three book deal, the first two being Jackson & Perkins Beautiful Roses Made Easy and Jackson & Perkins Selecting, Growing and Combining Outstanding Perennials. Each of the two is published in six regional editions. The third book, which will be delivered next January, will tell how to use roses in a new way, how to partner them within the landscape in companionship with annuals and perennials."
So, in a worrisome time when efforts are heightened in the search for new ways to attract buyers to gardening books, optimism continues to feed publishers' hopes. According to McBride, "All the indications suggest a solid future. I'm seeing more and larger garden centers attached to stores like Home Depot and Loews and to hardware chains as well. I don't know if it's the post—9/11 qualms, but it seems that people want to stay home and be more comfortable there." "There have been so many new houses built," says Firefly's Koffler, "that there are always new people who want gardening books. I have a lot of faith in the market." Timber's Maillet notes, "People are buying houses at a younger age. Mortgage rates are low, and it's a generational thing too as people get into the garden at 30 or 40 or 50. Baby boomers are also more college educated and tend to read more." Says Farrell at Antique Collectors' Club, "Gardening is still here. It did not go away." Reggio at Reader's Digest concurs: "Gardening is not dead. There is always an ebb and flow."
Are too many books being published? Amazon.com's Reese doesn't think so. "Really, there are so many different kinds of gardening, so many different gardeners and so many regions to do it in. As both a gardener and a book lover, I don't think it's possible to ever have too many titles from which to choose."
