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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#131

Post by mcphage »

paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

> You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper.

That just makes it Easter for publishers. The major problem with Amazon is monopsony, not easier distribution.

> You print books? Well we have e-books now.

Which have to be purchased ultimately from the publishers, so again, they’re still there making money, they just don’t need to bother printing books anymore. You’ll note they’re not any cheaper.

> You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly.

I think this is confusing cause and effect. Authors turned to social media because publishers weren’t doing a great job marketing, not because it makes publishers unnecessary.

Re: No one buys books

#132

Post by NegativeLatency »

paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

IMO there are still quality publishers, but they are small and tend to focus on specific topics. Two that I'm aware of, although I'm sure there are more out there:

- https://lostartpress.com

- https://tinhouse.com

Re: No one buys books

#133

Post by satvikpendem »

bombcar wrote: post #122
vundercind wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta admit: I rarely make time for any recent fiction. Too busy catching up on the last 5,000 years. I don’t expect that to change before I die. Film has a similar problem—there are plausibly low-thousands existing films worth my time, a whole lot of them 30+ years old. I could never watch a film made after 2000 and not run out of good entertainment in my lifetime. They’re damn lucky the Mouse got copyright extend…

It’s also a highly effective sorting algorithm - anything still talked about ten years after it came out is probably worth some time. I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively quickly see all US animated kids movies …

The Lindy Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

Re: No one buys books

#134

Post by satvikpendem »

The only major reading I do these days is via audiobooks, I simply read them faster than via visually looking at the page. It might be my attention span, but somehow audio is just faster to literally cram words into the mind at high speed than consciously moving your eyes over a page.

Re: No one buys books

#135

Post by Anon4Now »

paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

Businesses that remain stagnant don't get shafted so much as outmaneuvered. Instead of investing and pivoting, they cling to the old business model. Short term, their decisions make financial sense, but long term, it's a death sentence.

Meanwhile, Amazon is looked at as the behemoth in the industry, yet it probably isn't thought of as an online book store / publisher by most people. I think of so many things before I get to, "Oh yeah, they also sell books."

The one piece of information that I wish the article had mentioned is the age demographics of avid book readers. My gut tells me the market has dropped significantly in the last ~25 years, but I'd like to see the data.

Re: No one buys books

#136

Post by WolfeReader »

lrvick wrote: post #81

Most books today are sold with DRM and when the DRM servers are deactivated the books stop working. This happened with the Microsoft ebooks store and has happened with countless other DRM media. Sometimes books are automatically revised, or censored. Sometimes accounts holding DRM licenses are deleted or deactivated by mistake. The only way to actually own a book these days is to buy it on paper, or from one of the r…

Kobo and Google Play both tell you up-front if a book has DRM or not. And very often - not "rare"-ly as you claim - buying directly from the publisher results in a DRM-free ebook.

Re: No one buys books

#138

Post by WillAdams »

ozim wrote: post #112
WillAdams wrote: post #48

Turn it around: How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read? How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this? Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books traditionally take up has been replaced by: - encyclopedias --- Wikipedia -…

In Poland we publish 9000 new books each year, of course initial runs are like 500-1k copies. Not sure how it breaks down in detail on types like science publications and else but average person reads 1 book a year, avid readers read 7 and above but they are 1% of the population. Just some stats as I watched discussion on this topic. I think the question was rhetorical but feels like a nice thing to add.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I was reaching for.

Curious what the distribution is for types of books.

In the U.S., bookstores lose money almost the entire year --- only making money for the Christmas holidays.

Re: No one buys books

#140

Post by Spivak »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #111
paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

> Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. Publishers have been shafting authors for centuries. I'll shed no tears on their behalf.

Prior to the digital age where it's possible for the author to self-publish the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of selling books and giving authors 15%.

So while I think it's been hard to make a living as an author I don't think it's necessarily the publisher's fault. Better to be the one's selling shovels than the ones mining for gold.

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