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No one buys books

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Re: No one buys books

#271

Post by jprete »

hintymad wrote: post #242
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.…

Same here. I'm not sure if it's psychological. When reading my Kindle, I have to constantly fight my urge to do something else, maybe except for reading a page-turner novel.

That's exactly why I get paper books. An e-reader is too much like a smartphone and I start circling the UI looking for distractions.

Re: No one buys books

#272

Post by WalterBright »

I've been buying scifi books from thrift stores for a decade or more.

But in the last couple years, there's been a near complete collapse in it. The racks of scifi have abruptly dwindled to a handful of lonely books. The entire book section has dramatically shrunk as well. This is across thrift stores, not just one.

Is it:

1. nobody buys physical books anymore

2. nobody donates physical books anymore

3. donations seem to be driven by estate sales. Maybe the book lovers have already all died out and their estates are liquidated

I don't know. But I'm glad I bought the books when I could.

Re: No one buys books

#273

Post by WalterBright »

AlbertCory wrote: post #253
roughly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same - I far prefer paper books for reading, and mostly because it makes an enormous difference in my ability to focus. Re: the ecological side - I'm not actually convinced that a paperback book is markedly more of an ecological burden than an e-reader and the rest of the associated infrastructure. I think it's possible the e-reader pencils out in the long term, but I think a full lifecycle accounting of the…

The undeniable minus of a Kindle e-reader is: the illustrations suck. They're just too small. Half the time, my "library" has book covers that I can't even make out.

That's why a retina display ipad is now my preferred reader.

Re: No one buys books

#274

Post by sien »

karmakaze wrote: post #141
roughly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same - I far prefer paper books for reading, and mostly because it makes an enormous difference in my ability to focus. Re: the ecological side - I'm not actually convinced that a paperback book is markedly more of an ecological burden than an e-reader and the rest of the associated infrastructure. I think it's possible the e-reader pencils out in the long term, but I think a full lifecycle accounting of the…

This is not good news. I just got my first eInk reader today and first thing I did was go through all the navigation setup pages. I have one professional development book and was going find a work of fiction to start. Hope it works out.

FWIW I got a Kindle in 2010 for a trip and found that I really liked it.

I also wound up inadvertently encouraging other people to get them.

Only one person out of about 6 who got them after I got them didn't use them. She didn't actually read much.

Re: No one buys books

#275

Post by bigthymer »

Anon4Now wrote: post #135
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…

The best survey data I've found for this information is linked here [1]. It breaks data down by age range for those who read at least one book in the prior year. It defines avid readers as having read 50 books/year but doesn't do an age breakdown for this subset.

1 - National Endowment for the Arts - "U.S. Patterns of Arts Participation: A Full Report from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts" - https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/US_Patterns_of_Arts...>, page 44

Re: No one buys books

#276

Post by paulpauper »

In my essay “Writing books isn’t a good idea” I wrote that, in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

yaawn..this useless stat again? The author erroneously mixes fiction with non-fiction. Of course, non-fiction from a boutique or niche publishing house will have smaller sales and thus depress the average. This includes such books as "trail guides in California" and so on, or science books. These non-fiction books are never expected to sell many copies and are marketed for a small or specific audience in mind, and there is minimal or no marketing push. So if you include these non-fiction books by tiny publishing houses, of course, most books sell few copies.

Fiction books by major publishing houses marketed to a general audience and with a significant marketing push are expected to sell a lot of copies, and do. Hence the large advances commonly seen for authors who write these type of books.

Re: No one buys books

#277

Post by russellbeattie »

ethbr1 wrote: post #100

>> Q. And Penguin Random House pays Amazon to improve its search results? >> A. There is something that is available to our publishers, it’s called Amazon Marketing Services, AMS, and all publishers can spend money and give it to Amazon to have hopefully better search results. >> — Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House Wait, "hopefully better"? What the hell is Amazon selling, magic publishing advertising snake oil…

It's a protection racket.

Here's how it works: The big companies that pay for AMS get listed ahead of companies that don't in the search results. Since they all pay, it means that the top results are basically ranked the same as if none of them paid. But if you don't pay, your books will appear in the "organic" results - after all the marketed ones - essentially destroying any chance of being seen.

This way Amazon can claim that their search results are fair and algorithmic, protecting them from accusations of monopolistic practices. AMS is a simple paid marketing service, not at all like a tax or protection money, right?

But what's really happening is companies are paying just to make sure they're included somewhere in the top results rather than the organic ones, which no one bothers to look at.

They do the same for their App Store search on Fire TVs. No rev share? Good luck finding that app - even if you search for it by name.

So "hopefully better" is all the publishers are paying for.

Re: No one buys books

#278

Post by tryptophan »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #244
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…

Copyright law is ridiculous and abusive (thank you supreme court). There is some role for domain knowledge, curation, and editing, but the article shows that's not what they make bucjs on: celebrity drivel, bibles, sat prep, and the copyright monopoly. It's just a cartel, just like the music labels are.

Man can we just kill these industries?

Copyright law is so annoying and its supposed to promote quality...which we get none of. Free youtube tutorials are the best learning resource these days.

The GDP hit would be insignificant too, like <.1%.

Re: No one buys books

#279

Post by paulpauper »

sigio wrote: post #17

No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based. Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)

"No one buys ________", except for those who do, which is still a lot of people. So tired of these overgeneralizations.

Re: No one buys books

#280

Post by paulpauper »

bachmeier wrote: post #193

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…

Also, the author conflates fiction with non-fiction. No kidding, if you include science books , guides, how-to books, etc. most books do not sell many copies, but they are not expected or intended to. It's not like the market for calculus books is that big. Fiction books by major publishing houses for a general audience still sell a lot.
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