Assimil phasing out physical books?

[figgles]

Has anyone noticed this happening? As someone who prefers physical books and seeks to reduce my screentime as much as possible this is really worrying. There's not an unlimited supply of second-hand physical books if they just stop making them.

Ukrainian, Czech and Catalan are not available as books, Dutch with Ease is gone altogether, and the newest Italian with Ease is not being published in physical format and is impossible to find even second-hand.

Are they only publishing some languages in electronic format due to low sales?

Try multilingualbooks.com -- They appear to have both the Italian and Dutch course you were looking for:

Italian- https://shop.multilingualbooks.com/coll ... an-edition
Dutch - https://shop.multilingualbooks.com/prod ... eq=uniform

EDIT: $175 for Italian superpack is silly. Get the book and buy the audio directly from Assimil for ~$42. The correct MP3s are available on their site https://www.assimil.com/en/with-ease/1885-italiano-italian-mp3-download-3135414907731.html.

[emk]

I wonder then if they have delisted the English->Italian book because they intend on printing a new version in English.

It feels like Assimil's website is offering slightly fewer titles with an English base these days? And the warehouse/online branch of Shoenhof's no longer seems to be acting as a major US distributor. Assimil has one retail seller in the northeastern US (in NYC).

Amazon in the US does carry a generous range of English- and French-based courses, but that doesn't necessarily mean Amazon is moving much volume.

I don't know how things look in the UK, but it's entirely possible that the English-speaking market for Assimil isn't huge these days. And they almost certainly lack the cash and the knowledge required to go head to head with the big mobile apps.

This saddens me, because Assimil is very much a family business, run by several generations of polyglots. And their courses do work quite well for people who want graded input in nice daily chunks, with some grammar explained here and there along the way.

[figgles]

Yes, Assimil has much less available in English. It's strange because they took the time to make their website available in English (and others), whereas before it was French only, but now there is less of a reason to shop there if you don't speak (or at least read) French at a good level.

[Le Baron]

It feels like Assimil's website is offering slightly fewer titles with an English base these days? And the warehouse/online branch of Shoenhof's no longer seems to be acting as a major US distributor. Assimil has one retail seller in the northeastern US (in NYC).
...
I don't know how things look in the UK, but it's entirely possible that the English-speaking market for Assimil isn't huge these days. And they almost certainly lack the cash and the knowledge required to go head to head with the big mobile apps.

This surprises me and in another way doesn't. That Assimil has only one retail sales outlet for all that area in the north-eastern US. As if they want people to not find their books.

In the UK when I was a teenager Assimil wasn't very visible. It was available, but not a first choice or something the bookshops highlighted. The French course in English was always available, but I never remember seeing much else although I know now ones for German, Spanish, Portuguese existed then. Linguaphone had a far larger presence for the more serious home learner, with those expansive courses in a little attaché case. On a holiday to Belgium in the late 1980s I bought a copy of Le russe sans peine from the late 70s or early 80s. Before that I don't think I'd seen it before.

When I moved to Belgium/France that's where I saw Assimil more commonly. I think a fairly good sign of a book's strong presence is if they turn up a lot in 2nd hand or charity bookshops. They turn(ed) up very rarely in the UK, whereas Teach Yourself and Linguaphone did.

No doubt Assimil is following the same trends as many other language course producers in having more and more online and as e-editions, but they need to understand how much learners value their original materials.

[iguanamon]

...No doubt Assimil is following the same trends as many other language course producers in having more and more online and as e-editions, but they need to understand how much learners value their original materials.

I understand the lament and yearning for something physical to read/use to learn. Seeing a book's cover, holding it in my hand, thinking about the promise that if I work through all this, I will be well on my way to learning a language.

This runs into the reality of economics for publishers. It is not a charity. Books cost money to manufacture, to store, to ship. They can't be updated. Foot traffic in bookstores is down. The number of bookstores is declining. Assiml has to compete against its used catalog too... which... is good enough. In addition, it does have to compete against piracy too.

Another factor at play has to do with the way the game has changed for casual learners nowadays. When people who know me ask me how to learn a language, duolinguo, babbel, and other apps always come up in conversation.

Formerly, people who thought it would be nice to learn a language, their option would be to buy a course book with audio... go through three or four lessons and then never look at the book again once the reality of what it takes to learn a language becomes evident. Or, they could attend a course and drop out after a few weeks, or zone out. That's why used language course-books are such a great buy- after the first few chapters, they are almost pristine. Now, they can do duolinguo, or youtube for a month or two and drop it- no need to be a course book and audio.

I think these factors, especially the last one, are why we aren't seeing a lot of beginner course books becoming available to the mass-market. Now, those curious and dreaming folks can satisfy their curiosity on the web without having to buy anything.

What's the future model? Perhaps a subscription model where Assimil can manufacture its products print on demand for a paying clientele. I do not know. It's above my pay grade, but I don't think the good old days are coming back any time soon.

[themethod]

I read the (French!) book "My tailor is still rich", which talks a lot about Assimil's history as a company. They are not a big company, and the author cites sales numbers directly provided by Assimil. For me, this give me reason to buy directly from them, but I think they also help provide some much needed context to why books disappear. I do not believe they are actively "phasing out" books as a method on the whole, but they are certainly responding to market pressures.

There are a few things I want to point out here:

1. The numbers you cited still constitute a profit, even for those much less popular languages. Enough profit to build a huge business just on Le catalan sans peine? Of course not, but they are not trying to build a business on that single, niche course.

It is "subsidized" by their many more popular courses, to an extent, but within that established infrastructure, these smaller courses would still turn a profit, just not enough to get rich on.

2. As has been pointed out, they still offer many of the same courses in languages other than English. Do we have numbers saying that Brazilian Portuguese actually sells more copies in Italian than English?

Considering how many more English speakers there are in the world, I find that rather hard to believe.

3. The reason that I specifically mentioned Russian and Brazilian Portuguese is that these are still two pretty "major" languages that are among the most popular 10 or so learned by English speakers. There's a big difference between phasing out Breton and phasing out Russian.

One of the main draws of Assimil in the first place is that they offer (quality) courses in a wide variety of languages. So, the irony of phasing out all but the few most popular languages is that this actually makes them less relevant overall, since English speakers already have 100 courses to choose from for Spanish, French, and German.

This is also the effect of going from the serious course with well-constructed physical books to "just another app".

As someone who makes a living in online content and marketing, people who know what they're talking about know how important a "niche" is. Depending on your niche, it may not make you a super bazillionaire, but it is still enough to make a healthy living.

Trying to increase profits by abandoning your niche is a fool's game; it doesn't work in other industries and it hasn't worked in the language learning market. For instance, Living Language went from making solid courses in a wide variety of languages to irrelevant to out of business with this approach.

[figgles]

There are a few things I want to point out here:

1. The numbers you cited still constitute a profit, even for those much less popular languages. Enough profit to build a huge business just on Le catalan sans peine? Of course not, but they are not trying to build a business on that single, niche course.

It is "subsidized" by their many more popular courses, to an extent, but within that established infrastructure, these smaller courses would still turn a profit, just not enough to get rich on.

2. As has been pointed out, they still offer many of the same courses in languages other than English. Do we have numbers saying that Brazilian Portuguese actually sells more copies in Italian than English?

Considering how many more English speakers there are in the world, I find that rather hard to believe.

3. The reason that I specifically mentioned Russian and Brazilian Portuguese is that these are still two pretty "major" languages that are among the most popular 10 or so learned by English speakers. There's a big difference between phasing out Breton and phasing out Russian.

I don't disagree with your sentiments. I'm not sure that they're phasing out Russian and Brazilian Portuguese since I don't have any direct statements, however it is true that they are not available for purchase. I can only speculate why, and hope that is has less to do with a structural change.

I would like to add quotes from the book to qualify one of my opinions and give more first-hand context. I hope everyone finds them interesting and that it gives them food for thought about the future of Assimil.

(p85, J.L. Chérel speaking about his time running the company:)

L'anglais, l'allemand, l'espagnol, les classiques quoi. Il y a aussi eu des succès d'un an, tous les gens qui avait [sic] réclamé la méthode d'une langue l'achetaient, on en vendait deux mille en un an, et puis plus rien... Cela aurait pu nous décourager d'étendre le catalogue, mais c'était à la fois une question de notoriété et de satisfaction. On avait un certaine fierté à publier des langues, des langues, des langues...

English, German, Spanish, the classics, right? There was also successes of a year, everyone who had clamored for a language would buy it, we would sell two thousand [copies] in a year, and then nothing else.... That could have discouraged us from expanding the cataloug, but it was at once a question of notoriety and satisfaction. We had a certain pride in publishing languages after languages...

(p109)

Quoi qu'il en soit, l'internationale représente 30% du chiffre d'affaires d'Assimil (dont la moitié avec les livres à base étrangère)

Whatever the case, the international [sales] represent 30% of the sales volume (of which half was with foreign [i.e. not French] language base)

(p109)

...et les méthodes onéreuses , comme <<Objectif Langues>>, se vendent plus facilement que les historiques <<Sans peine>>

...and the less onerous methods such as as "Objectif Langes", sell more easily than the historical "Sans peine"

(p191)

La nouvelle collection <<Cahiers d'exercices>>, par exemple, représente en gros 15% du chiffre d'affaires

The new collection "Cahiers d'exercises", for example, represents overall 15% of the sales volume.

My English translations, pardon any mistakes, I'm trying to work quickly.

[Klara]

It seems that the situation in Germany is different. I took a quick look at assimilwelt.com and to my great surprise they offer more books/courses than ever. They even released a Russian advanced course on a German base. They also sell courses on an English base (the Yiddish course is English based too). The German course is now on 13 different bases available.

Books + audio are still on the forefront, the next course will be Ukrainian.

There's an article by Prof. A about the Assimil courses with a nice image:
https://www.assimilwelt.com/forum/positives-feedback-von-assimil-lernern/what-i-owe-to-assimil/

Here is an overview from the German website with a listing of their courses:

Assimilwelt.jpg

[themethod]

Yes, those languages are available in German on the main site. Italian has over a dozen, including Ancient and Modern Greek, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, etc. though not quite as many as German or French.

English has three: French, German, and Spanish. Even Italian is gone.

[tastyonions]

It does kind of beggar belief that the demand among Italian speakers for Assimil books is greater than the demand among English speakers, doesn't it?

Oh well, I guess I can be glad that French is my strongest L2.