why should they? libraries, public domain e-books, great online second-hand book selection ...
No one buys books
301–310 of 752 posts
Re: No one buys books
#302Can'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 print books? Well we have e-books now.
It's often the same publishers publishing the e-books. They did successfully make that transition.
> Instead they went all in on pulp bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good authors
If they're best sellers, as you note, that was clearly a good choice. They were selling what people actually wanted.
Re: No one buys books
#303I have about 6000 books, about 1000 of these are on Kindle.
Of the 6000, most have bookmarks. I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them. I've finished a couple hundred so far. I found my old business cards make perfect bookmarks.
I guess "No one buys books" isn't strictly true.
I tried to write 4 books. I was told that I'd likely sell less that 1000. Beyond that would be considered a major win. I finished one, published it, and have made about $500. It took me months to write.
I love books. I have a copy of "I, Robot" signed by Asimov. I really like books signed by authors.
Re: No one buys books
#304Turn 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 Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books traditionally take up has been replaced by: - encyclopedias --- Wikipedia -…
I believe another factor is frequency of moving, because that’d disincline people from buying significant amounts of any kind of heavy and/or bulky media, of which books are both. More than a small bookshelf’s worth is a real pain to haul around.
This. I donated half a lifetime's collection of physical books a few years ago, when I moved into my girlfriend's apartment. I kept books which are either a) impossible to get electronically (mostly technical or academic works), or b) worthless on screen (mostly large-format photography and art books, or c) for which I have a sentimental attachment to the physical artifact (a couple of first editions; some gifts; some that bring back particular memories).
It's so freeing! I read a LOT, and being able to curate a massive library in Calibre, and keep >3k books on my Kindle, is (for me) entirely superior to lugging around heavy physical objects.
I rip DRM off of (most) every ebook I buy, and back up the files, so I'm not worried about losing access, either. Even if the apocalypse arrives my Kindle + a solar charger fit in my bug-out bag better than a box of books.
Re: No one buys books
#305I 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.…
exact opposite for me - the more i got into ebooks, the harder i found it to handle the ergonomics of paper books, and today my reading is pretty much 100% on my phone or kindle.
Re: No one buys books
#306I used to buy and read a lot of physical books. Around 2013-204, I started moving to eBooks, and Amazon Kindle played a significant role in my journey. But a couple of years later, I had an epiphany while discussing books with my daughter, “I never see you read books. You are just reading on your computer (kindle) or the phone and are not reading.”
Since then, I have returned to reading physical books with an approximate ratio of 1:5 against digital ones. I have kinda rule/understanding with my daughters -- you have unlimited access to books that you can read, and you also get extra pocket money for reading them. Of course, it is OK not to finish a book, but in that case, a few cool-down days before buying another one.
Yes, buy and read physical books. I believe, the return is a magnitude higher for everyone than the loss it does to anything. If you have kids, read more physical books in front of them. Encourage them to read physical books. They are less distracting and help the kids focus.
Five years ago, I wrote a story about it. https://story.oinam.com/2018/why-physical-books-matter/
Re: No one buys books
#307Can'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 print books? Well we have e-books now. It's often the same publishers publishing the e-books. They did successfully make that transition. > Instead they went all in on pulp bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good authors If they're best sellers, as you note, that was clearly a good choice. They were selling what people actually wanted.
Are they? Mark Dawson was caught buying 400 copies of his own book in 2020, but he's not the first or last author to have done that.
Re: No one buys books
#308Fucking books are like museums. 100 year disadvantage.
Re: No one buys books
#309I have about 6000 books, about 1000 of these are on Kindle. Of the 6000, most have bookmarks. I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them. I've finished a couple hundred so far. I found my old business cards make perfect bookmarks. I guess "No one buys books" isn't strictly true. I tried to write 4 books. I was told that I'd likely sell less that 1000. Beyond that would be considered a major win. I finished on…
My book took a year and a half to write and has made about $400 in direct royalties.
I can't precisely quantify the return on investment, but I believe that having the ISBN on my resume has resulted in me getting more work opportunities and/or salary, so it's a pretty good investment. Also people think you're smart for having the stupidity to start writing a book without having the good sense to abandon the project halfway through.
Re: No one buys books
#310Does this include technical books? O'Reilly and Manning seem to have substantial customers. Or is the licensing of PDFs excluded from such figures?
The article only covers data for the Big Five publishers, who are: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan.