Hobbies Come in Handy

Before looking at trends in hobby books, we should consider a deceptively simple question: what exactly is a hobby? According to Paul McGahren, sales and marketing v-p at Fox Chapel Publishing, “Everything pursued in leisure should be considered a hobby. It should be fun, relaxing and have a zero burden of expectation with regard to the result. It becomes a craft when you start selling it, giving it as a gift, entering it into your local art show or using it as a measurement of proficiency.”

Fox Chapel itself is working to keep the craft mentality out of its woodworking books, and McGahren points out that Carole Rothman, author of the house's Wooden Bowls from the Scroll Saw, is an amateur herself—a professional cake decorator who only took up woodworking as a hobby three years ago.

Another of what McGahren terms the house's “no pressure, no stress” titles is The Little Book of Whittling. Apparently, the approach is working—40,000 copies of that title have sold in three years.

While sales of almost all other categories of books are weakening or remaining flat, the hobby category presents one of the few that grow more popular during lean times. “In these days of declining backlist sales, it's interesting to note the continued resilience of field guides,” says Robert Kirk, executive editor and group publisher for science titles at Princeton University Press. “If they're not recession proof, they're pretty darn close.”

By almost all accounts, the weak economy bolsters the market for hobby books. Not only are hobbies a fun and often inexpensive way to pass the time, but they are frequently ecologically sound, and they inspire a kind of nostalgia for simpler times—a Tom Sawyerish respite from the age of video games and eight-year-olds with their own Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

“In our experience, people do turn to hobby books more in a recession,” Gibbs Smith editor Jared Smith says. “People are realizing that they don't need to spend a lot of money or invest a great deal of time in order to have fun or gain new experiences. Our titles How to Play the Harmonica and The Pocket Guide to Magic address familiar subjects with a whole new attitude of curiosity and invention. It's like a shift in personality or lifestyle—from being a passive consumer to becoming more involved in and aware of the mystery and magic of everyday things. ”

Judith Schnell is publisher at Stackpole Books, which has a healthy backlist and new selection of books about fly-fishing, such as Modern Midges: Tying and Fishing the World's Most Effective Patterns. Schnell says, “Fly-fishing is strong in a recession and out of a recession. It has always been recession-proof, because the people who fly-fish tend to build libraries. Even when they can't take the dream trip to Alaska or New Zealand, they can buy a book and plan to go later or they can fish closer to home with the same kind of informational book.”

Skyhorse's associate publisher and director of sales and marketing, Bill Wolfsthal, notes that the press's Self-Sufficiency series—which covers such topics as home brewing and preserving—offers books that are both hobbies and useful. “Happily, the back to basics movement works for everyone who wants to be green and for those looking to save money,” says Wolfsthal. “Because both being green and being frugal will be with us for a long time to come, we don't think we will be seeing reduced demand any time soon.”

In London, naval and maritime publisher Conway (a division of the Anova Books group) is increasingly publishing hobby books for model shipbuilders, including the now annual Shipwright. Conway publisher John Lee says, “We've seen little evidence of the economic downturn impacting the sales of the specialist books; fall 2008 numbers were well up overall. At times like these, people prioritize what is important to them, and hobbies come very high up that list.” That doesn't mean publishers ought to rest on their laurels. Lee continues, “Shipwright has an incredibly loyal global readership of very skilled ship modelers, many of whom have every issue since 1972.” Conway adapted this black and white quarterly to modern needs after a reader questionnaire elicited a 50% reply rate. “The response prompted us to go to an annual format with further-ranging articles and printed in full color on a large format,” says Lee.

St. Martin's senior editor BJ Berti concurs with the nostalgia trend for both kids and adults. “We are publishing this year some books that appeal to a slightly different type of DIY audience,” she says. “Build Your Own Paper Robots comes with a DVD embedded in the cover that allows you to customize and print thousands of designs. Things That Go Boom, or Fly, Float and Zoom! has 18 projects that include electronic objects like Stomper, a walking bug–like creation, a lemon cannon and a hot-air balloon. These books appeal to an audience similar to the Make magazine demographic.”

On the higher end of the hobbies category sits Antique Collectors' Club, whose marketing manager, Karen Lunstead, says, “Books about collecting have declined a bit during the last few years, but the moderately priced books, such as Antiques at Auction in America, which is $25, and our Starting to Collect series—on subjects such as rugs, glass, 20th-century ceramics, antique furniture and antique jewelry and ranging from $25 to $35—remain popular, the latter especially because they are small, so they are easily carried by people visiting garage sales and auctions.” Collecting is still popular today, Lunstead says, because people want a bargain and want guidance from books about whether they've found one. The press has also noticed that collecting items of vintage fashion is a growing trend and as a result will publish Carry Me! this fall, on vintage Lucite purses from the 1950s.

Zack Miller, publisher of Motorbooks, an imprint of MBI, which is in turn part of the Quayside Group, is hesitant to state flat-out that sales of the books he publishes on cars and motorcycles have not been dented by the economy: “There is a cherished view among publishers that how-to books are recession-proof, but this is a different kind of recession, and things we thought were always true really aren't. Looking at our top 100 backlist titles, I would say that the how-to is a higher percentage than other kinds of books in that list. Still, I'd be dishonest if I said we're selling the same number of books we were two years ago. We're looking a lot more critically at every project that we consider doing.”

But, Miller adds, “If we do a book that has a special spin to it, it does just fine. We just published a $50, 300-plus–page book on the history of the Pontiac GTO, and based on lots of reviews and attention, and on some unfortunate timing for GM but good timing for us, that is doing quite nicely.”