Welcome to 2025. And while we are earnestly two days in and things are already off the ground, I thought it would be fun to share some of our 2024 tid bits (not in any particular order).
Book of the Year
Undoubtedly, Black Night is Falling (Scott Woods, 2024) was the BC Book of the year. The story behind the book is Scott's to tell, but I will say the book grabbed the Press by the reins and declared we would not be ending 2024 quietly. And it was great to be a part of that six weeks of working to get books into hands and see that book rocket.
Welcome Back, Mesa Book Festival
(Full Disclosure: Publisher Bob also organizes the Mesa Book Festival)
The end of the year had A LOT of this year's highlights- with none more important that the 2024 Mesa Book Festival. Having adjusted our own event schedule and removed two significant contributors to our annual event sales totals, we were putting incredible pressure on the Mesa Book Festival to make up that ground. And while we had no history with the event up to that point to show that it could, the festival had moved this year to a VERY public location. It was a big gamble… that paid off. We more than made up the ground we needed via the event, and that was an AMAZING feeling.
The Family Grew
2024 was a year that we wanted to focus on growing the catalog. And that of course meant focusing on growing the TEAM behind the catalog to give us the bandwidth to accommodate more titles. Editor Ben had been with us, and we wanted to find some help to engage more editing capacity as well as some marketing and administrative opportunities.
In walked Fae and Will, at the same time, but unconnected to each other, to answer the call. Fantastic additions to our little group, we are lucky to have them. And in 2025, you'll get to see what that means.
The Year of the Paperback
Our overall book sales in 2024 were about the same at 2023, but was drastically different was that 85% of our book sales in 2024 were paperback. That's the highest percentage we have seen since we started measuring in 2014. At 13%, eBooks in our universe had their worst year we've ever seen.
The industry overall reported eBook gains for the year (so the trades say), so this went against the greater grain of the industry. There are some mitigating factors (Black Night Is Falling is only available in Paperback being one), but as our books have been universally available at all major outlets for eBooks on a consistent basis, it will be interesting to see if that trend holds in 2025.
Amazon No Longer Rules the Roost
Channel diversity, selling our books across multiple outlets, was a BIG focus for us as far back as 2019. We have wanted to expand other avenues for book sales without cannibalizing Amazon. As late as 2022, Amazon accounted for 45% of our sales. In 2023, that number compressed further to 31%. For 2024, that % came in at 20% of our total sales. Some of that can be attributed to the decline in eBook sales overall as Kindle absolutely dominates that market, but we saw upticks across the board in all other distribution areas- and we even saw some new opportunities emerge for us that we can take advantage of in 2025.
Overall, it was not a record year for the press- we probably won't be signing songs in the halls about 2024 like we do about a couple other years. We will however, remember 2024 as a year of (successful) transition, and putting some great new pieces in place that make a big impact as we close in on 2026, our 20th year. It was a great year.
But before that,we have to get through 2025, and we have some great stuff in store. I'll share that in the next post.
Thank you all for the great 2024!
Bob
Publisher Guy
