Betty Rice: Fluff Has Lost Its Appeal
For Betty Rice, editorial director of Hearst Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, the biggest trend today is the blending of both hobbies/crafts and decorating titles. "I'm definitely seeing more home decorating in crafts books and more advice in decorating," she says.
Even for big, inspirational books like the upcoming Country Living Stylish Renovations (Oct. 2001), "there is a lot of information, a huge resource section in the back, and an appendix with purchasing/contracting guidelines. A few years ago, it would have been all inspiration," Rice notes. "The pure fluff has lost its appeal." It's not that people don't want beautiful books. "Pretty pictures are an expectation," acknowledges Rice. "They're what pulls people in in the first place. But they also want insider advice and a resource section."
On the crafts side, books such as Hearst's Country Living Handmade series, which covers everything from Halloween (due out—when else?—in October) to the perennial seller Soap, have gotten more decorating oriented. "The series is really about how these things look within a home setting," observes Rice. "They're not hardcore how-to books."
With the reorganization of the Hearst book and magazine companies into the same division, the synergy between the two has gotten stronger. "One of our strengths," says Rice, "is that we are so close to the magazines. The magazine editors are up on the trends, and it's a big advantage having access to the materials in the magazines."
Rice attributes Hearst's strong book club sales to members' familiarity with the quality and reliability of its lifestyle magazines, such as Country Living,House Beautiful and Victoria. "Since July, 2000, for example," Rice explains, "the Country Home & Garden Book Club [part of Bookspan] has bought 16 Hearst book titles, including two as main selections—Victoria Designers in Residence [Feb. 2001] and Country Living Country Chic [Apr. 2001]. The subject matter and tone in the books fulfill the promise of what the magazines represent. When books are acquired, Hearst Books editors take into account the appeal they will have to the book clubs."
Another trend that Rice points out is that "people are staying put. They want to put their leisure into their home." She sees this both in the types of books that Hearst sells best, including this fall's big book on decorating with art, House Beautiful Art, and in the proliferation of the two largest home-decorating chains, Sears Great Indoors and Home Depot Expo, which plans to open 200 more stores in the coming year.
Rice, who has herself hunkered down in a home on Cape Cod, was instrumental in acquiringa renovation title to help with her own place—House Beautiful Fireplaces. "We did that one because I wanted to add a fireplace to our house on the Cape and there weren't any other books on the subject," she says. She has equally high hopes for another inspiring book that satisfies a lifestyle niche, House Beautiful Pools , coming next month.
While Hearst Books continues to rely on general bookstores for the bulk of its sales, "we do more and more special sales," says Rice. In addition to the clubs, Home Depot Expo and Sears Great Indoors have increasingly become strong sources of revenue. "These are huge stores, and people are spending an average of three or four hours in them. Obviously, they're ready to buy."
Like other lifestyle/decorating publishers, Hearst is looking to the Internet for increased sales. Of course," says Rice, "each magazine has its own Web site and puts up our book covers." But she would like to do more, including making book excerpts available online. Rice wants to capitalize on the fact that in crafts, at least, the Internet has become what she calls "a modern-day quilting bee."
Charles Nurnberg: Once Ugly Ducklings, Now Swans
If there's one thing that's changed for the better in craft book publishing, believes Sterling executive v-p Charles Nurnberg, it's the look of the books themselves. "We used to do some of the ugliest craft books known to man," remembers Nurnberg. Once published only in basic black and white, Sterling's craft books are now bursting at their bindings with color. In today's market, says Nurnberg, "books have to look good—people are as much into the aesthetics as the information."
This year, Sterling will publish 250 crafts titles, with almost 90% being "homegrown" ideas. Nurnberg credits the publisher's understanding of the market and an ability to make an early entrance into breakthrough crafts, like rubber stamps, as key to success. That, and a staff that's been known to spend their weekend afternoons scouting crafts stores in search of the next big trend. Last May, a store reconnaissance by Nurnberg brought gel candles onto Sterling's editorial radar screen. He pitched a major crafts chain on the idea and "instantly got an order for 5,000 books." Chris Rankin's Gel Candles had a first printing of 17,500 in early April and has just been back for a reprint of 33,000.
As for what's hot, Nurnberg looks for titles on knitting and rubber stamps to come on strong in 2001. Woodworking remains one of Sterling's strongest categories, with 300 books on the subject in print—including The New Router Handbook, whose sales are approaching two million copies. And the Harry Potter craze is sprinkling gold dust even on crafts books. Janice Eaton Kilby's The Book of Wizard Craft was the "hottest book we had at Bologna," reports Nurnberg. A lavishly designed and illustrated guide to making crafts for wizard parties, it boasted a first printing of 42,000, then shipped another 27,000 within 48 hours of its April pub date.
Sterling sells to a broad spectrum of markets and prides itself on never overlooking the potential for crossover sales. The Complete Soapmaker was sold to body/mind/spirit markets, while Tabletop Fountains and this year's Tranquillity Fountains found success in gardening markets. When it comes to pricing books for the highly competitive crafts market, Nurnberg cites $24.95 as the hardcover ceiling with an occasional exception for a craft that's hot or a trend on it's way up—Sterling's 1999 Big Book of Knitting sold successfully at $29.95. Nurnberg sees trade paper titles topping out at $19.95, "unless it's a monster book. But any price can be transcended by size and presence on the shelf." And while many publishers are jumping on the Internet bandwagon in search of new sales, Sterling has no plans to join the stampede. "When we bought Lark," says Nurnberg, "they did a lot of sales on the Internet and had done quite well. But our policy is that we don't sell to our customers' customers. We can't work to get people to carry our books and then take their customers away."
Nurnberg sees a bright future for crafts books, even in a declining economy. "We've found that in bad times our books sell even better. People use crafts to ease the stress in their lives." But good times or bad, notes Nurnberg, publishers can count on the extraordinary resilience of crafts, from quilting to knot tying. "Craft categories don't crash," says Nurnberg, "they just make emergency landings and then take off again."
Jane Hamada: Crafts Books Attract a Passionate Audience
From the viewpoint of Martingale & Company, a leading publisher of high-end quilting-instruction books, the major market change in recent years has been not the Internet (which it views as a strong but friendly force), but where the company peddles its titles. In the words of publisher Jane Hamada, "We sell direct to independent quilt and fabric shops and into the book trade, but we're selling our quilt titles more effectively into crafts channels. The [crafts] chains have expanded and grown into amazing superstores in some parts of the country—Joann's in particular, but also Michael's, and regional chains such as A.C. Moore and Hobby Lobby." Book club sales, she adds, "do nicely"; bookstores account for about 20% of sales. But a full 50%, Hamada reports, are achieved via an automatic ship program to independent fabric shops and specialty distributors. They sign up for the house's three monthly quilting titles and receive them like clockwork. Martingale, in return, gets a very useful baseline for print runs.
At the customer end, Martha Stewart has been a huge influence, Hamada tells PW. "She's validated crafting and how-to and made it valuable." Cable TV shows devoted to home-and-garden—type programming swing their weight, too. "These shows have a large following; in order to feed their programming, they use our authors."
The market for quilting trends has slowed since Martingale jumped into it 25 years ago, although the company's top seller is still from that category—Mimi Dietrich's Happy Endings: Finishing the Edges of Your Quilt has sold 230,000 copies since its 1988 publication. Three years back, the company began to look around for other areas to which it could apply its expertise; knitting was identified as a promising area. That list is now up to eight per year, a nearly optimal number for the house. "Knitting is a vertical market, like quilting," Hamada says. "It has lots of depth. It's a younger audience and there's not a lot of price resistance. The materials themselves are expensive. Some of our authors are also owners of retail stores, and they say customers will spend $300—$700 on yarn. It's not about cost-saving anymore. It's about self-expression."
The main strengths of Martingale books, says Hamada—instructions that work, color illustrations and photography, and innovation within categories—are not duplicated on the Web. "The Internet doesn't seem to affect us. We monitor chat groups to see what they're saying. We get feedback on what we're publishing. Most of it is complimentary, I'm happy to say. Mostly it's not competition." Even though her books push the limits of price—$35 tops for knitting, $30 for quilting, with a typical 96-page softcover selling for $24.95 to $27.95—Hamada finds that crafters are more than willing to pay for color and vetted instructions.
"Like cookbook collectors, people love looking through these books," she says. "People will buy them because they're intrigued. Even if they use them for only one thing, they love having them by their bedside. They're a passionate audience. The expectation is for full color and wonderful illustrations. Unlike a lot of the self-published stuff, the bells and whistles set us apart." Those bells and whistles, Hamada believes, will carry Martingale through any economic downturns. "Even if the economy goes bad, we'll stay on track. When people want more value for their money, they think about crafts."
Lauren Shakely: Author Branding Is Big Business
"At Clarkson Potter," says senior v-p and editorial director Lauren Shakely, "we've been doing lifestyle/decorating books for 20 years." During that time, one of the biggest changes she's observed is that Clarkson Potter books have become a "name" in themselves, as customers come to recognize them as a quality brand. "In the beginning, we were concentrating on books on countries," says Shakely, referring to Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff's popular series, launched in 1985 with Caribbean Style, which is still in print. "We used to think of decorating as a series when we did the style books; now we think of our books as individual titles. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I almost think of our books as a subcategory."
Today there is a lot more branding of individual authors, too. Many have built a book-buying following by hosting television shows. Among the publisher's TV/book stars are Martha Stewart, whose newest craft book focuses on the country's second biggest retail holiday, Halloween (Aug. 2001), and public television's Debbie Travis of The Painted House, whose Debbie Travis' Living and Dining Room, coauthored with Barbara Dingle, will be out in September. Emmy Award—winning Discovery Channel host Christopher Lowell, author of last fall's Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Design, is also gaining fans with his populist message that anyone can decorate a home.
Despite the evolution of the do-it-yourself market, many of Clarkson Potter's books continue to be primarily inspirational. "The growth of Home Depot hasn't changed the direction of our books," notes Shakely. "We did have a time five years ago when we wanted to have a project in our books. But those projects get in the way for some people." Oversized, full-color photographic design titles such as Tim Street-Porter's Tropical Houses: Living in Nature in Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Java, Bali, Thailand, and the Coasts of Mexico and Belize (Nov. 2000) fit squarely within the wish trend. Other wish books, such as this month's Ethan Allen's New American Style: Stage-by-Stage Decorating of the American Home by Ethan Allen with Vivia Chen, contain specific design and budgeting advice.
Looking to the near future, Shakely doesn't anticipate any changes to the Clarkson Potter publishing program as a result of the downturn in the U.S. economy. "I don't think people's interest in decorating or crafts waxes or wanes with the economy," she says. "People aren't going to start knitting, when it's so cheap to buy a sweater at Wal-Mart. What we do when there's an economic downturn is to make sure we're sensitive to our reader's needs. We need to make sure we're not doing a book on gilding your bathroom, for instance. But people will still have to live in houses and hang pictures on the wall."
And, good times or bad, Shakely's counting on readers' continued need to surf the Net. In May, Clarkson Potter will launch its first Web site (www.clarksonpotter.com), which will link to parent company Random House's site (www.randomhouse.com). "It's designed for the consumer," says Shakely, adding, "We're alert to the Internet. We often list sites in our buying directories, and we often advertise or run excerpts on decorating and crafts sites." Although Clarkson Potter's still putting the finishing touches on its site, Shakely says that it will promote backlist titles and run a feature on the just-published title from caterer Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa Parties! Also in the works is a consumer-oriented email newsletter, which customers can sign up for on the site.
Todd Hensley: Providing "a Ton of Content" on the Web
Quilting is hot, hot, hot.
According to the recent Quilting in America 2000 survey, notes Todd Hensley, publisher of C&T Publishing, American quilters spend some $1.84 billion annually on their hobby—a whopping 51% increase since 1997. "We've seen steady growth over the last decade, but significant growth for the last three years," says Hensley, who estimates that 90% of C&T's new releases are quilting-related. "Quilting is definitely hot."
C&T targets the whole spectrum of quilters, he explains, from beginners to master artisans, with titles on a wide variety of topics. "In quilting there's an ongoing evolution in techniques and tools used, and we're also seeing incorporation of other crafts, like stamping on fabric, fabric painting and embellishment," he says. "We've got a title out this spring called Flower Pounding, where the authors [Ann Frischkorn and Amy Sandrin] literally take flowers from their garden, place them on treated muslin and smash them with hammers to create their own fabric."
Garden motifs are also "a very hot area right now," he says, pointing to another spring title, Through the Garden Gate by Jean and Valori Wells, which draws design and color inspiration from nature. Hensley also singles out fabric folding, or creating what he calls "fabric origami," and then using it to make 3-D quilts, as a bona-fide trend. "This was just a huge surprise for us," he says, noting that a recent title, Rebecca Wat's Fantastic Fabric Folding, is in its sixth printing.
If there's a change in the market itself—besides explosive growth—it's that quilting enthusiasts have been inundated with products, "especially books," says Hensley. "As consumers have become more discerning, it's raised the bar for everyone in our industry, and we've all had to publish better books."
While dedicated quilters generally subscribe to several magazines, Hensley says he doesn't feel the heat of competition. "Ultimately, I think there's plenty of room for both," he notes. "People who want breadth and depth in projects and inspiration are only going to find that in books, since magazines only touch on the subject matter." Plus, he notes, in addition to offering a forum for reviews, excerpts and author interviews for C&T's titles, "magazines bring new quilters and beginners to the field—people who may want to just dabble or try the craft out, and not invest yet heavily in a book library."
And what about the Internet?
"Let's face it, the Internet is an amazing source for all consumers, and I think quilters especially," says Hensley, noting that C&T's Free Stuff for Quilters on the Internet by Judy Heim and Gloria Hansen has sold more than 40,000 copies. "We've made a commitment to providing a ton of content on our Web site [www.ctpub.com] instead of just a static catalogue of titles. It's also a sales channel for us, but a small one."
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the majority of C&T's sales come from specialty outlets—quilt shops in particular, along with fabric and crafts stores—"mostly independents, but we also service chains like Michael's, Joann Fabrics and Hancock," Hensley reports. The company is also seeing "nice growth" to the general book trade, including book clubs, he adds.
C&T is "sensitive" to pricing—and indeed Hensley points to a number of titles in the $12.95—$14.95 range that he says do "extremely well"—but he's not sure there's necessarily a price ceiling. The Art of Classic Quiltmaking by Harriet Hargrave and Sharyn Craig, a softcover book priced at $34.95, "is one of our top sellers," he says.
Harriet Pierce: Publishing into a Strong Demographic
This particular corner of the market has always been an integral part of Watson-Guptill Publications' program, says Harriet Pierce, v-p of marketing and associate publisher.
"We started out over 60 years ago doing books on art technique," she explains, tracing the company's expansion into crafts, hobbies such as photography, and interior design. Although the bulk of Watson-Guptill's sales come from general bookstores, it has long been a presence in art supply and crafts and hobby stores, she adds, and points to the company's ability to publish books that "demonstrate longevity" as a major strength over the decades.
In recent years, Pierce has seen a definite upswing in both interest and sales, something she attributes in large part to the baby boomers. "These categories are publishing to a very strong demographic that is intensely interested in these subjects," she tells PW. "The baby boomers are at a point in their lives where they have a little more time to devote to crafts and hobbies, and their homes are very important to them."
General societal influences have also fueled interest, she notes. "We all work a little too much, we don't have enough vacation time, and we're inundated with media," she says, pointing to the prevailing ethic of home as both sanctuary and creative haven. "Books are a wonderful tool for dreaming and imagining."
As for the do-it-yourself craze, superstores such as Home Depot "have done a good job providing what people want, and made it easier for them to believe they can go out and get the materials they need to take projects on."— projects such as those outlined in The Art of Faux by Pierre Finkelstein and The Big Book of Decorative Painting by Jackie Shaw, which Pierce calls "classics on our list."
The use of color in home décor continues to be a strong trend, she notes. Watson-Guptill has seen brisk sales from last year's The Complete Color Directory by Alice Westgate, and is expecting big things from next fall's Paint: The Big Book of Natural Color. "The authors [Elizabeth Hilliard and Stafford Cliff] take the inspiration for colors out of nature and show you how to do that within your home," Pierce says. "We see that as another hot trend."
Also selling like hotcakes is Vinny Lee's Mood Indigo. "This has been a runaway for us," Pierce reports. "Bookstores can hardly keep it on the shelves. The whole concept of decorating with rich, dark colors is compelling." At $35, Mood Indigo is at the high end of Watson-Guptill's pricing spectrum, which generally ranges between $20 and $25, Pierce says, but it demonstrates what she calls the "timeless test" for any book: Does it deliver value for the money? "If it really delivers, people will pay more."
Pierce says she's never felt competition from magazines—"the synergy is critically important because magazines let people know about what books are being published"—and as for the Internet, "there's never been a downside to it," she contends. If anything, the flow of information only enhances sales. "And of course, it's obviously a great opportunity for marketing."
Nor is she threatened by a softening economy. "If people were going to have professionals come in and redecorate, maybe instead they'll go get the paint themselves, and that just spurs them into bookstores," she says. "I think already book sales have proven we're a little different than the rest of retail. Plus, I hear people talking on the train, and I think that during economic downswings we tend to turn inward and think about what's most important, and that tends to be what's going on in our family and in our homes rather than our 401K balances."
Mikyla Bruder: Teen Arena's the Current Hot Spot
What Chronicle brings to the table in terms of crafts and home décor "is this great combination of affordability and style," says editor Mikyla Bruder. "We publish beautiful books at an affordable price, and I think that's to a certain extent what we're known for. Plus, I think we understand our audience really well."
Breaking that audience down into three areas—"die-hard crafters; confident generalists who want to, say, dabble in soapmaking and are looking for inspiration and guidance; and the absolute beginner who is looking for solid how-to"—Bruder notes that Chronicle publishes to all groups. "The challenge is always specifying the audience and then understanding how to speak to them."
Bruder herself has been a crafter for a long time, she says, and thus has seen changes in these categories on both a personal and professional level.
"In the same way that, say, Pottery Barn is not just a store that sells furniture, these books are targeting an aesthetic and a sensibility," she tells PW. "Crafts books in particular are starting to look more sexy to me. We owe a lot to Martha Stewart in that regard certainly, though Chronicle has always placed an emphasis on style."
Although Bruder reports that sales are fairly evenly spread out across independent and chain bookstores and specialty markets, from such lifestyle stores as Williams Sonoma and Crate & Barrel to crafts giants like Michael's, overall "specialty retailers are one of our great strengths." Such practical home décor titles as The Color Book, The Bathroom Planner and Liz Wagstaff's Paint Recipes have become "backlist workhorses" at stores like Home Depot and Restoration Hardware, while Bonnie Trust Dahan's Garden House, which Bruder pegs as more of an inspirational book, has flourished at such outlets as Smith & Hawken.
"Retail has definitely influenced the way we publish," she notes. "We look to them for context more than anything, and when a book comes in, we say okay, do we want to do this for the Home Depot market, for Target, for Pottery Barn, and so on. We think about defining our audience earlier on."
Magazines, on the other hand, have not had much of an influence. "We look to magazines for information on trends and audience," Bruder explains. "Magazines know their readers so well, and obviously they can stay current and flex with trends much more fluidly than books can. That said, I think crafts and décor books do things magazines can't, which is to offer a timeless and authoritative lasting resource."
As far as specific trends go, Bruder picks "the teen arena" as hottest of all. "The teen audience is huge," she says, and Chronicle is making a concerted effort to reach it with such books as Cheap Frills by Jennifer Knapp, a how-to on adorning clothes. Then there's Crafty Girl, a new series of paperbacks in Day-glo packaging aimed at "tweens"—girls in the 8-14 age range—on up. "Girls are into making things, and this is a series of super-fun, super-cute how-to books that tap into that," Bruder says. Plus, at $12.95 each, the books are both fun and affordable.
Pricing "is about understanding your market," she says. "We have very affordable books and will continue to, and given the economy that's a smart way to publish." Not that she's too concerned about potentially rough economic seas ahead. "This category in particular has the opportunity to remain strong with recession," she concludes. "With less money, people go out less, and their priorities lie at home. To me that says nesting, and that means entertaining, making your home a wonderful place to be and having something to do while you're there—and that certainly covers home décor and crafts!"
Jim Childs: Partnering with His Authors
Taunton Press, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last fall, is experiencing what publisher Jim Childs characterizes as "very nice growth. In the four years since I've been here, our sales have doubled. In recent years, the whole home area—like Creating the Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka and Timberframe by Tedd Benson—have driven our sales. That's been the fastest area of growth."
From the start, Taunton has published home design, woodworking and fiber arts titles geared to people who already know the basics. In part, explains Childs, the company's strategy is based on the fact that "it's hard to be distinctive in basic crafts books. The more broad-based the book, the less well it will do. It has to have more of a unique hook to be successful."
Not that the book trade is Taunton's only sales channel. Its fiber arts books do well at specialty stores, like the nearly 2,500 quilting shops across the country, 2,000 knitting shops and 1,500 JoAnne's and Michael's outlets. "No one single channel dominates," says Childs, who questions the long-term viability of the Internet for crafts purchases. "Almost all of the craft-dot-coms failed. People like to touch and feel," he says. "Women like to see the fabrics; guys like to try out the tools and feel the wood. You can't do that on the Web."
Childs looks to continued growth for the hobbies/crafts/decorating area to meet the needs of older baby boomers. "As boomers age, they are either hoping for or recognizing the fact that they're going to have more time. I don't think everyone's going to play golf." Referring to the perceived wisdom that high-tech jobs require high-touch relaxation, he adds, "when people spend most of their time on the computer, it's nice to have something tangible to do. There's a sense of real satisfaction. We also appeal to people who want to know why something works. We like to publish for people who have a curious mind set—that's across the board."
Nor does Childs underestimate the power of Generation X. He attributes the growth of fiber arts, particularly knitting, to those new crafters coming up. He also notes that "a lot of Gen Xers are buying their first house," which helps drive the home decorating market.
Taunton's sales growth is also a result of its editorial policy to seek out authors like Kaffe Fassett and Sandra Betzina in fiber arts, who are experts in quilting and knitting, and garment and pattern sewing, respectively, and staying with them for book after book. "We have a real philosophy that we partner with our authors," Childs explains. "We try to publish people over the long haul. We like to look for authors who are a franchise unto themselves, and authors authors with more than one book in them. Especially in fiber arts, it's an author/name brand marketplace."
Pricing, however, is not an important concern for Childs outside of home decorating. "That's the area where you can sew and save money, so that tends to be more price sensitive," he says. In woodworking, where a workshop can cost between up to $8,000, the cost of a book such as last year's Setting Up Shop, by Sandor Nagyszalanczy, which lists for $29.95, or his forthcoming Power Tools (Oct.), which lists for $40, is not an impediment for woodworkers. Similarly, Childs points out that for people who spend $200—$300 on Rowan yarn to make a sweater, the price is right on books like last summer's Kaffe's Classics, which lists for $24.95.
Dorsey Mills: Books Complement the Crafts Magazines
The "Martha Stewart phenomenon" has had an enormous impact on the crafts world, says Dorsey Mills, associate editor at St. Martin's Press, describing the publisher's backlist as a "wonderful" collection of mainly knitting and origami titles—60% imported from Great Britain, 40% generated domestically—some with hundreds of thousands of copies in print. According to Mills, the market has swung away from small, detailed crafts such as cross stitch and embroidery to handiwork that yields more immediate results: scrapbooking, painting furniture, mosaics—all larger, quicker, easier, more tangible. The audience has broadened as a result. "People are less intimidated," Mills says. "They pick a craft they think is attainable and go for it. Martha Stewart has been a huge influence, as have crafts experts on TV shows on NBC, Lifetime, Home and Garden TV. Women are showing a desire to get back to roots they didn't know they have."
Mills says St. Martin's books are complementary to crafts magazines, which may show particular patterns and photos but "what you see is what you get. They don't inspire much beyond the particular projects. You're stuck there." Their customers want what a good book offers, including an author history and one person's sensibility. "Magazines are good for patterns, but with Debbie Bliss [the publisher's top "name" author, the Baby Gap designer whose nine books include the recent Baby Style: Home Accessories and Irresistible Knitwear Designs for 0—3 Years Old], you get a broader picture, a broader look. Books are more inspirational, something to hold onto to, put on a shelf, with an actual spine."
The Internet is also complementary, Mills says. "You get free patterns online but you don't know if they've been tested, and there is no art to go with them." St. Martin's sells a lot of books via Amazon and barnesandnoble.com. "People are surfing for patterns and will click and place an order," she notes. That's really increased."
Sales to mom-and-pop stores, however, are on the wane. Catalogue and specialty outlets account for 60%—70% of St. Martin's' sales in knitting, and the book chains 30%—40%, but this varies by subject. Origami, one of the house's strong areas, sells much more heavily in bookstores, primarily to a YA audience. "Everyone goes through a cootie-catcher phase, and some take it a step further," Mills reports. Her books cater to that market: Origami to Astonish and Amuse by Jeremy Shafer, coming in July, provides instructions for original designs that include a nail clipper with all the parts and a Swiss Army knife that actually opens.
Price sensitivity is dependent on production values, Mills says. "We try to keep prices as low as possible, but we want our books to be attractive. We've seen $25—$30 very high-end books with concealed spiral binding, with tabs and split pages.There's a book out now on French quilts priced at $45. But there's a difference between an art book and a how-to. How-tos are priced under $30. Our trade paperbacks cost between $14 and $20. People would want more color or a hardcover binding if it were to cost more."
Mills affirms that a weak economy means good things for crafts, and she expects the field of sewing to blossom. "Martha Stewart makes everything look so beautiful. Well-done books can do the same thing. They can convey an inspirational, go-for-it attitude. People would love to wear a skirt that fits. It's not that hard. Elissa Meyrich's sewing class [in New York City] has a waiting list. Her book Sew Fast Sew Easy will feed into a growing market. It's not fuddy-duddy." Indeed, she says, it's "young, hip and edgy, for the dELiA*s market."
Paul Feldstein: Boomers Are Broadening This Market
"We have a unique perspective here in North Pomfret, Vermont," begins Paul Feldstein, managing director of Trafalgar Square Publishing. "We are both a publisher and a distributor of British publishers. We don't originate any crafts or decorating books here, but we do publish fully Americanized co-editions with British publishers."
Trafalgar Square's primary business is distribution, however, and before deciding what books to take on, Feldstein determines which titles will do best for general trade stores, libraries, catalogue sales, mass market retailers and other venues. "We've always targeted books that sell very well into nontraditional outlets," he explains. "We have gift reps who sell into the traditional gift trade, and we've typically done a lot of selling to other non-trade outlets in-house. But the book trade has taken off for us in the last five years through our commissioned reps."
Says Feldstein, "Some subjects are more author-driven than others. Knitting, for example, is one area where names matter. Debbie Bliss is our lead author, with seven or eight books. She was well-known when we took her on. And now we're getting recognition for Zoë Mellor." Her latest is this month's Animal Knits, which bears Trafalgar's imprint.
Another area Trafalgar does well with is mosaics. "The Mosaic Book [by Peggy Vance and Celia Goodrick-Clarke], which we published in conjunction with Conran Octopus, has sold over 50,000 copies for us," Feldstein reports. "We had no idea if there was a sizable market for a book like that, so we started with 2,000 copies back in 1995."
Home decorating books with the greatest appeal, Feldstein has found, have been those playing to the mind/body/spirit combination. "The Healing Home [by Suzy Chiazzari] sold 20,000 copies in hardcover and we're up to 7,500 in paperback," he says. "Feng Shui for Modern Living [by Stephen Skinner] did well for us last year."
Much has transpired at Trafalgar over the last decade. "Ten years ago we were a different company," Feldstein recalls. "We focused on specific craft books and sold them in the hundreds, not the thousands. We've changed along with the market. There still are people who buy very targeted embroidery or pottery books, but with the baby boomers, the market has broadened for many how-to books. The baby boomers can afford to buy their homes and decorate them."
Feldstein credits book clubs with getting ever more books out to consumers. Trafalgar's spring and fall crafts and decorating books have scored eight selections with Crafter's Choice and Country Homes & Gardens clubs (see sidebar, page 44). "We're selling a lot more of certain crafts books in the book trade as well," he says, "books on knitting and mosaics. We've always tried to avoid really basic stuff and have looked for higher price points and a higher content level."
The Internet, says Feldstein, provides a house like Trafalgar Square with a real opportunity. "For a company with 9,000 active titles, everything from The Craft of Stickmaking [by Leo Gowan, a Crowood Press book] to Home Harmony [by Suzy Chiazzari, published by Trafalgar Square], customers who want them can finally find them. The Internet has opened up whole new areas for specializing with targeted Web sites."
Books have been pretty much recession-proof in the past, he notes, because they have been a relatively inexpensive way to fill time. "But now, will people fill more of their time on the Internet because it's free? Our price ceiling for crafts and decorating books is $29.95. When you go to $35, I believe you cross a very strong barrier. That's one of the few thresholds left. People will buy biographies for $35, but there's more price resistance to illustrated books because of the huge promotional and remainder market. That market produces as much product as we do."
