What was true a year ago in this publishing arena is becoming more so: the market for home books, whether do-it-yourself, dreamy inspirational tomes or the increasingly common melding of the two, is vibrant and healthy, tapping into a still-growing number of homeowners who are building decks or dressing up living rooms. Younger home buyers have opened the doors onto a new demographic, while seasoned householders are searching for upmarket appearances. Women have become robust participants in the DIY movement, and guys are showing increased interest in home decorating. "It's a great category," says Abrams CEO Michael Jacobs, though he notes the inevitable downside of success—the increased number of competitors.
Years ago, says Bulfinch publisher Jill Cohen, the category was notably less crowded. "Now," she laments, "there's lots more low-priced competition." Even Reader's Digest Books, with its forthcoming update of its granddaddy CompleteDo It Yourself Manual (Apr. 2005), notes the fiercer competition. "People can choose brand-name books from Home Depot [published by Home Depot], Lowe's [Sunset Books], Stanley [Meredith Books] and Black & Decker [Creative Publishing International], all of which cover a wide range of topics," says Spike Carlsen, executive editor of Family Handyman magazine and editor of Reader's Digest's revised manual. "In 1973, when we first published our book, there was nothing like it out there."
Yet only one publisher, Clarkson Potter's Lauren Shakely, mentioned cutting back on home decor titles—"house and home books experienced a market glut similar to what happened in gardening, so we pared back, but I think perhaps we pared back too much."
By and large the reports are about growth. Gibbs Smith is increasing its list every year by 5%. Watson-Guptill will expand next year to bigger and splashier books. Taunton Press has seen double-digit sales growth annually in this category, according to publisher Jim Childs. And Tuttle, which specializes in books about Japanese design, also boasts increased annual sales. "It's always hard to tell why sales are rising, but sales are rising," says Tuttle's publishing director Ed Walters. "There's not a lot of competition for books looking at regional or national design trends in Asia."
Specialized subjects may find the competition less intense, but at the bookstores, home centers and gift shops, space is a major concern. "We need authoritative authors to get in to the retailers," says Cohen. "Even 10 years ago this wasn't true. Today's customers want a lot for their money."
What's really hard, says Gibbs Smith editorial director Suzanne Taylor, is meshing the market between gift and trade. "[Bookstores] buy for different reasons," she says. "The gift market buys to enhance the ambience of their store. Bookstore buyers are buying the product." In the gift market, the color of the book matters. Does it match the store's theme and decor?
As for the home centers, once you have a good series seller, it's easier to get in, says Creative Homeowner editorial director Tim Bakke, "but you fight for slots every six months."
Breaking into the Market
Branded names are not the only way to beat the odds, but they help (see sidebar, p. 40). Filipacchi Publishing, a branch of the company that publishes Elle, Elle Decor, Metropolitan Home and Home magazines, entered the home improvement market two years ago in order to use the magazines' content for book ideas and then publicize its books in the pages of its magazines. "We've had great reception at the chains because we're a known quantity," says publisher Dorothee Walliser, citing as a case in point this month's makeover title Renovate: What the Pros Know About Giving New Life to Your House, Loft, Condo or Apartment by Fred A. Bernstein, with an introduction by Metropolitan Home editor-in-chief Donna Warner. During the current holiday season, the title is being featured on interior design tables in B&N's top 100 stores—"this really boosts sales," Walliser says.
To ensure a title's success, Bulfinch does "as much outreach as is humanly possible," says Cohen. "We spend a huge amount of time with each of our authors, trying to learn about their world." For Susan Sargent's The Comfort of Color by Susan Sargent with Todd Lynn (Sept.), the book's editor did color workshops with Sargent and worked with her contacts to come up with marketing ideas. "We did a mailing to 300 potential outlets, including Calico Corner, Bed Bath & Beyond, Jo-Ann's fabric stores, and furniture stores," explains Cohen. "It was a lot of effort, but we're finding it worthwhile. This is where the opportunities are." Bulfinch also sends out sales blads for every book it publishes and is experimenting with sending DVDs, too. In Cohen's words, "When the books are well done and produced well, people love them."
The sell-in is much more convincing if you can show great photos, says Walters at Tuttle. "It's critical to get advance visual material to retailers, which we do systematically via blads." While no independent bookstore will carry six copies of Contemporary AsianLiving Rooms (Feb. 2005) or any other design book unless it's by a star, he says, if they like what they see, they will try one or two copies. "The important thing is not how many you place but whether you get in at all."
Getting publicity for authors who don't have TV shows is a challenge, agrees Victoria Craven, Watson-Guptill senior acquisitions editor. The best tactic, she says, is to "counter with a strong book and an aggressive publicity campaign." An author with a following from previous books is one surefire way to go. "In Mary Gilliatt we have an author who is almost a series of her own," Craven continues. "We've published many books by her and have two coming up, Mary Gilliatt's Home Comforts with Style: A Decorating Guide for Today's Living [Oct.] and Mary Gilliatt's Dictionary of Architecture and Interior Design: Essential Terms for the Home [Nov.]. She's a known entity now to booksellers, and we're building on that."
Gibbs Smith is also building on customers' recognition of an author, such as Betty Lou Phillips, whose Secrets of French Design (Oct.) is a follow-up to several of her other titles on the subject. "Author familiarity instills confidence," says Taylor. "I think buyers are looking for more substance and consumers are looking for more beyond TV celebrity." The biggest challenge, she says, is the age-old question of the right price point for the right product with the right timing. "You have a leg up when you are trying to build substance. The challenge is meshing all these things together."
Abrams, which has diversified its titles into two lines, uses the Stewart, Tabori & Chang imprint for its more practical books. According to Jacobs, "STC is targeting the mainstream audiences that have been drawn to renovation and redecoration through the proliferating popular TV decorating shows like This Old House and Trading Spaces." Home improvement, he observes, "is now part of family entertainment." Home books, he adds, are especially strong backlist sellers, often helped by special promotional offerings to booksellers. "Our biggest challenge," he tells PW, "is that we not duplicate our own efforts or cannibalize the market space that retailers allow us."
Money Matters
Price sensitivity recedes when it comes to pure inspiration, says Shakely at Clarkson Potter. "If a person is building a swimming pool, then spending $40 for The Swimming Pool: Stylish and Inspirational Ideas for Building and Decorating Your Pool [Apr.] by Martha Baker, the most stylish author on this subject, is not a big deal." On the other hand, next month's Doug's Rooms (see sidebar, below) is a $19.95 paperback that Shakely expects will sell to the widest possible audience, "including shoppers at warehouse clubs."
At Chronicle Books, "coffee-table is not the soul of the list anymore. We try to have a range of titles for different audiences," says senior editor Mikyla Bruder. "We really think holistically about our books, for tiny little shops on the corner as well as chains." TheComplete Book of Paint by Lynne Robinson, Richard Lowther and Liz Wagstaff (Apr. 2005), combines two earlier books: PaintRecipes (1996) and DecorativePaintRecipes (1997)—both DIY books with a total of 300,000 copies sold—mixing the two titles into one with more mass appeal, she says.
Firefly Books, which tends to sell mostly in bookstores, online and via book clubs—"the nontraditional markets want paperbacks, less expensive volumes or their own books," says publisher Lionel Koffler—keeps prices as low as it can while maintaining its standards. "We're not trying to be everything to everybody. We have sold more than 100,000 copies of Sheds by David and Jeannie Stiles. It's part of a series by the Stileses that includes Playhouses and Cabins.
Not only are the various projects in Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Ideas Under $50 (Jan. 2005) targeted to the budget-minded, but the book's price is itself reasonable—a $14.95 trade paperback.
Hardcore: Out the Door
Publishers are fusing traditional how-to manuals with more engaging, inspirational material, while lavish coffee-table books are becoming larded with hands-on tips. As publishers attempt to meet the demands of an increasingly sophisticated audience, this is perhaps the biggest change that's making inroads in this category.
The trend away from strict DIY has affected even the old man of how-to helpers, Reader's Digest CompleteDo It Yourself Manual, which was originally published in 1973. The first two editions of the book (the second was out in 1991) have sold more than 10 million copies. The new edition (Reader's Digest Complete Do It Yourself Manual, Completely Revised and Updated), overhauled to reflect changes in the marketplace, de-emphasizes major jobs (grading a driveway, installing septic tanks) and features instead the kinds of projects that Home Depot and Lowe's have made accessible and affordable: storage plans, landscaping, flooring, lighting. "The scope of products has changed, " says Spike Carlsen. "There's more on buying and more on estimating the amount of materials you'll need. People have access to so much now." And there are more photos. "The first edition had no photos," Carlsen says. "The second had some. This one has 1,500."
Other hardcore how-to publishers are taking similar routes to inspire readers with ideas. "We've become more inspirational in our how-tos," says Bakke at Creative Homeowner. "Books with both how-to and inspirational elements in them do better than how-tos [alone], and the larger the inspirational component, the better they do." One of the company's great successes has been Jay Silber's Decorating with Architectural Trimwork, with more than 320,000 copies sold since 2001. The book, Bakke says, is composed roughly of 30% how-to instruction and 70% inspirational photos. The companion volume, Philip Schmidt's Decorating with Architectural Details, published in June, has even more inspirational photography and has done correspondingly well. Bakke credits the increased participation of women in all aspects of home improvement for the change in presentation. "Women are a stronger voice in the marketplace, and they seem drawn to payoff shots. Step-by-step isn't as important as seeing the results of the step-by-step."
At Creative Publishing International, hardcore is also out, or at least modified. The recently introduced IdeaWise series, with individual titles dedicated to different parts of the house—IdeaWise: Decks & Patios (Nov.) and IdeaWise: Garages (Dec.)—is as much inspirational as it is instructional, with each area presented in a case-study fashion that includes background info, photos showing the projects' results and expert advice. The company's all-time bestseller, The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair, has just been published in a substantially revised and expanded edition, with 300 added color illustrative photographs illuminating the repair process in a glamorized way.
"Not all that long ago, home decor as a publishing category was largely separate from hammer-and-nails titles on home repair and improvement," says Bryan Trandem, home improvement executive editor at Creative Publishing International. "Painting and interior design belonged to the decorating category; plumbing, wiring and carpentry belonged to home repair. These days, the category distinctions are breaking down, because the typical consumer now shops for most painting and decorating supplies at the big box home improvement centers or mass merchants rather than specialty paint and wall-covering retailers. The big home improvement center is now both decorating center and hardware store. A good many of our painting and decorating books see their strongest sales in what was once regarded as a hardware market."
Series dedicated to a room-by-room approach—as in Pottery Barn Dining Spaces and Pottery Barn Workspaces, new additions this month to Oxmoor House's Design Library—seem to have their parameters set, but they too add inspiration to the mix in the form of detailed room tours.
Pretty Gets Practical
The transformation of home improvement books goes in both directions. Titles that once were entirely inspirational—the straight coffee-table book—now carry a share of instruction, too, if only a smattering of advice unobtrusively tucked in.
Nina Campbell's Decorating Notebook by Nina Campbell, out last month from Clarkson Potter, includes pictures of "swatches" and lays out its room solutions the way an interior designer would. Chronicle Books, says Bruder, now mixes "referency" content with more traditional inspirational formats. "Meryl Starr's Home Organizing [Oct. 2003] was a great workbook format in a spiral binding, utilitarian and interactive but as beautiful as a coffee-table book," she says. "It's a little bit of a new direction for us. Not one extreme or another, DIY or 'beautiful.' "
"Although we continue to publish the highly inspirational books for which we're known," says Alison Starling, publishing director at Ryland Peters & Small, "we are also aware that the market wants practical information, ideas that they can recreate at home and books that solve a problem." Starling notes that the success of Real Simple magazine, with its emphasis on the delights of a well-organized, tranquil home, led her to a book with the magazine's former home editor, Jane Burdon: "Room Rescues [Mar. 2005] acknowledges the fact that most people don't have perfect homes, but want to make the most of what they've got."
Several of these newly "blended" titles inform readers that they're getting both inspiration and practicality. Stewart, Tabori & Chang describes Heather E. and Carl G. Adams Jr.'s Designing a Home with Wood (Sept.), a follow-up to the successful Stone: Designing Kitchens, Baths, and Interiors with Natural Stone, as "an inspirational style guide and a technical manual."
Barron's calls John Harris's A Treehouse of Your Own: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building an Amazing Treetop Retreat (Nov.) "a book for romantics—but with a practical flair." Another treehouse book, Treehouses of the World by Pete Nelson and Radek Kurzaj (Abrams, Nov.), takes a loftier photographic approach, but includes material on how tree houses are actually built.
The driving force behind all these changes and modifications is a market that wants to build, improve, upgrade, beautify or open its doors to let others in. Sometimes it just wants to impress, as in Curb Appeal (Sunset Books, Jan. 2005), which coaches homeowners on easy ways to spruce up their homes' exteriors.
Calling home improvement an "all-genders kind of field," Childs at Taunton Press quotes statistics from American Demographic Magazine that show 23% of new homes in 2003 were purchased by single women, up from 18% the year before, and 40% of all homes purchased were by singles. "Our focus is on renovating, not the portable part but the structure of the house, of designing or inspiring people. In this area, it's important to have authors with a point of view. Anyone can do a beautiful book; more important is finding fresh perspectives." One such is Duo Dickinson's The House You Build: Making Real-World Choices to Get the Home You Want (Taunton in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects, Oct.), which presents 19 unusual and imaginative homes whose budgets didn't break the bank.
Newspapers have home sections; real estate pages feature makeovers. People want to see how other people live; they want entrée to other people's lives. At the same time, the home has become a haven, a safe, controlled place in a world grown ever more perilous. The leap from haven to sanctuary is a very small one—as evidenced by such titles as YourHome as a Sanctuary by Josephine Collins (Ryland Peters & Small, Sept.), with its spiritual approach to decorating, or Laurine Morrison Meyer's Sacred Home: Creating Shelter for Your Soul (Llewellyn, Oct.), which counsels readers on using interior design to nourish the inner spirit. An alternative approach is Robyn Griggs Lawrence's The Wabi-Sabi House (Clarkson Potter, Dec.), which promotes an appreciation for beauty in one's private environment.
An additional factor fueling the current crop of books is the belief that people want more than home improvement. "They want design," says Taylor at Gibbs Smith. "They want more hands-on advice. People are braver. Judy Ostrow's The House That Jill Built ([Mar. 2005] offers case studies of women building their own homes. It's Rosie the Riveter actually does it in terms of building a home." Blueprint Remodel by Michelle Kodis (Sept.), the third in Gibbs Smith's Blueprint series, looks at 10 standard tract homes and shows how to turn each into a dream home. "The star of the book is the ordinary American tract house—the same old cookie-cutter structure found in suburbs everywhere," says Taylor. "People want designs that reflect them and their values and their interests. This is a trend that has been building, so to speak. People are more involved with creating their environment. It's been teasing people and now people want real information."
The imperative that a blended book is what the market wants is near universal. "People are more sophisticated and are willing to spend money on their homes and want more inspiration from their books than just how-to," says Firefly's Koffler. "Ten to 12 years ago, everyone was cocooning. That has evolved into pride in one's home. Book publishers have to fill that need."
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Whether it's Frances Mayes's Bringing Tuscany Home (Broadway Books, Oct.), Bo Niles's Country Escapes (Ryland Peters & Small, Sept.) or At Home in the Hudson Valley (Chronicle, July), house titles have come into their own as a new kind of luxurious variation on armchair travel. As Chronicle senior editor Mikyla Bruder explains, "We're choosing regions that have some mystique associated with them, areas known for their lifestyle, that impart a real sense of what it's like to live there. We aren't going to do At Home in Sacramento."
Designers in the news rank almost as high as TV celebrities when it comes to raising the visibility of a houserelated book. In the words of one publicity director, "We have found that the most successful home decorating categories involve mediagenic interior decor personalities who typically have retail bases." Who could beat that?
Publishers traditionally reach booksellers either through distributors or through their own sales force. But what about categories, including home and decorating titles, that have a substantial audience outside of bookstores? How do publishers get their books into hardware stores, home repair stores and other retailers where DIY homeowners are likely to gather?
