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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#191

Post by tmtvl »

npilk wrote: post #130
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…

> If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book scanner or send it to a scanning service. Well, technically there's a third option...

Yeah, but if I _could_ write my own, I wouldn't be in the market to buy one, right?

Re: No one buys books

#193

Post by bachmeier »

The headline isn't accurate. "No One Buys Most Books" maybe, but the article talks about books that sell more than 300,000 copies in a year. 90% of books sell fewer than 2000 copies in a year, but 2000 is actually a decent number, especially considering it will be a lot more than 2000 over the lifetime of the book.

There's more to this as well. You have to factor in that a lot of people write books because they want to say they wrote a book, and others do it because it supports their professional brand, so there was never an intention or expectation of selling a thousand copies.

Re: No one buys books

#194

Post by ilamont »

A big audience means publishing houses don’t have to spend money on marketing

Only blockbuster authors get serious marketing support. For everyone else, big publishers want authors to shoulder marketing and publicity costs and responsibilities. Many lower tier authors are shocked to find they get zero marketing support:

I’d hate for readers to think this happens to every author who signs with a traditional publisher. I have worked with several “Big 5” publishers, and never got even a hint of marketing.

https://janefriedman.com/marketing-support-big-5/#comment-24...

Further, most authors are not experts in publicity or promotion, or have the expertise to run paid marketing campaigns.

This goes a long way to explaining why many books published by the Big 5 sell so poorly.

Re: No one buys books

#196

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

When you say "publishing industry" you're really saying "paper book industry", right ?

Nothing stops a publisher from being an ebook publisher, and that's a tried and true successful model adopted all around the world.

You'd have made the same argument for vinyl record publishers saying they're cornered into a niche, but no, as you point put artists will still want editorial power and support, so digital music is thrieving.

Re: No one buys books

#197

Post by m463 »

yreg wrote: post #51

I recently started buying paper books. Yes, it's not particularly ecological, but I found that I'm able to focus at the text much better this way. My Kindle (despite plenty of obvious advantages) just doesn't really work for me. It took me years to realize this, but I always start to tinker with the brightness settings, switch pages back and forth, go into the book library and back, play with highlighting words, etc.…

I found that I change the font size/lighting depending on time of day, which is harder to do with a paper book :)
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