Small print publisher thrives in niches as digital sales ebb
Print books are back. I think.
“People thought physical books were goners,” said Jed Lyons, chief executive of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Lyons should know. The 66-year-old ships about 41,000 books a day across the United States and to Europe. He has been in the publishing business since the 1970s.
Digital books peaked three years ago, at about 20 percent of sales, compared with about 80 percent for print and audible, he said. Digital’s share has since declined to about 15 percent of sales.
“The industry is trying to figure it out,” Lyons said. His best guess is that the print revival has to do with touch. “People like the smell, the texture, durability. You can hold it in your hand and keep them and surround yourself with books.”
Lyons’ profitable business has none of the sexiness of the big publishing houses that bring you the latest blockbuster from John Grisham or Danielle Steel.
Rowman & Littlefield in Lanham, Maryland, is where you go when you want the standard textbook on how to speak Swahili, a “steady Eddie” bestseller in the company’s trove.
You want the “Statistical Abstract of the United States” (affectionately known as Stat Abs)? You can get all 1,032 pages from Lyons for $199.
“Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park” is hotter than avocado toast.
“We are in the niche business,” Lyons said.
Rowman & Littlefield’s 100,000-long backlist has more than boring textbooks: “The Politics of Punk,” “Japanese Horror Films” and “The World of James Bond” are among its titles.
The company has four revenue streams. Selling and shipping for 125 other publishers breaks even but helps cover fixed costs. Then there’s trade (history, biography, hiking and fishing); the lucrative textbooks; and, finally, the academic/ scholarly books popular with libraries.
The company sells so many hiking books that it employs two full-time mapmakers in house.
But the real heart of the business lies in its list of textbook titles and its recurring revenue.
“Our most important customer is the college student,” he said. “They buy the books.”
Textbooks sell year after year after year after year. “The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics,” a must-have textbook for the international-relations crowd, is in its eighth edition.
“It’s like the insurance business — an annuity,” Lyons said. “We aren’t reinventing widgets.”
Rowman & Littlefield grosses $120 million a year by shipping about 10 million books out the door. The company employs 428 at its various locations, which include administrative offices in Lanham and a 300,000-square-foot warehouse in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, about 30 minutes west of Gettysburg, which houses a publishon-demand outfit that can print and ship a book in 24 hours. The company also owns a 150,000-square-foot warehouse in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Rowman & Littlefield has offices in New York, Boston, Connecticut, Boulder, Colorado, and London. Lyons is the majority owner of the business; he pays himself a salary and bonus. The family of a deceased partner owns the rest.
Each print book shipped brings in an average of about $12. Authors get $1.20 of that, and $3.60 or so covers the cost of actually printing the book.