Executives in the book publishing business are fond of saying that the industry has expanded at the same rate as the wealth of the nation since the days of Caxton.
The growth rate for sales of European books has ranged from minus to plus 1% in the past five years, according to the consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers, hardly the sort of heady expansion that makes financial hearts flutter. Even gross domestic product has managed to outpace that sort of increase.
Despite this, there is a surprisingly upbeat mood in the business, even as it undergoes dramatic change. Several entrants, from online booksellers to discount catalogues and supermarkets, have led to more activity and price competition than the industry has seen for years.
Christmas is a crucial time for the book industry, with 17% of annual sales made in December. This Christmas, booksellers reacted to a flat market overall with huge discounts on a few blockbusters. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the discounts helped shift stock, albeit at the expense of margins.
Iain McDonald, an analyst at Numis Securities, says competition was especially fierce last year. "Online retailers are still very competitive, but I think what we are finding is retailers like Waterstone's are using key titles to make sure there is a strong footfall [customers] in the shops."
Waterstone's, the market leader, has been offering copies of one of last year's most popular stocking fillers - Michael Palin's Himalaya - at half the list price as part of its weekly campaign. There have also been special one-day promotions at WH Smith to compete with the likes of Amazon and discounters such as the Book People.
Such competition led to an average selling price of all books in one December week of £8.07 - 23p lower than the corresponding week in 2003, according to the Bookseller magazine.
The strategy at Waterstone's, which is part of the HMV group, is to entice readers into the shops to get them to pay for other, non-discounted titles. Half the book chain's sales come from titles that rank below 5,000 in the charts, according to its spokesman, Paul Barker.
Mr McDonald believes this strategy is difficult for smaller or more diversified rivals to compete against. Price competition for top titles could lead to smaller outfits being hit by buyers simply "shopping the offers" and walking away without buying anything else at full price.
Most book retailers depend on the high turnover bestseller lists, which at Christmas were dominated by television tie-ins, from Jamie and Nigella cookbooks to the Sheila Hancock biography of her husband, the actor John Thaw, and Little Britain scripts.
It is too early to give a verdict on Christmas and New Year sales. However, several factors are making booksellers more positive than they have been for years.
David Roche, product director at Waterstone's, is particularly excited by the fact that fiction is selling strongly for the first time in years, in spite of heavy competition from television-based entertainment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, part of the increase relates to promotion on a mass-market television show: Richard & Judy.
Launched last year in a bid to emulate the success of a similar bookclub run by Oprah Winfrey in the United States, the Channel 4 show has had a notable impact on books sales. Earlier this year, book shops ran out of copies of Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor after it was featured on the programme. A new edition had to be hastily printed and sales rose by 350%.
The show has not yet reached the heady success of Oprah - after the chatshow queen picked East of Eden, more copies of the 53-year-old novel by John Steinbeck were sold than in its entire history.
"I think this is a beginning of a journey where reading is something that we want to do again," said Mr Roche.
Such enthusiasm is expected to filter through, but only marginally, to sales. PwC estimates that the wholesale books market will expand by 1.5% in 2004 and almost 2% this year.
Industry scrooges believe the ageing population of readers is harming longer-term sales.
The well-known fact that newspaper readers are getting older is amplified in the books trade. According to the US National Endowment for the Arts, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds reading literary books, defined as novels, plays and poetry, fell by 28 percentage points in the 20 years to 2002 to 42.8%.
The national survey of 17,000 adults found that "for the first time in modern history, less than half of the adult population now reads literature". Indeed, the percentage of adults reading all books, even the increasingly popular self-help or religious texts, fell in the period.
Although there is little evidence to suggest that the situation is so bad in the UK, British publishers have their own concerns. A report by Ofsted last month found that one in three children leaves primary school behind the desired reading level. Several publishers are involved in efforts to improve literacy. Some, such as Penguin are also exploring other ways to deliver content, via audio, for instance.
The trend towards older readers, and the corresponding desire to reverse it, also explains the phenomenon of "cross-over" titles that appeal to both adults and children. The Harry Potter phenomenon is the best example, but there have been many others. Mr Roche describes readers aged 15 to 25 as the industry's "holy grail".
Even demographics are welcomed by some analysts, however. Mr McDonald at Numis says: "If anything, demographics are good for the books business. As we live longer, we'll read more books."
