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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#341

Post by Tor3 »

endgame wrote: post #212
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.…

On top of all of that, nobody's going to revise the book out from under me while I'm reading it, or prevent me from loaning it to a friend, or even yanking it entirely from my device.

As far as I know (in the sense that I've never experienced anything like it in a decade of using a Kindle) that the book's getting revised from under me while I'm reading it. There's an occasional update for some books, but I have to actively choose to download the updated version, otherwise my original stays the same. I think I've only downloaded an updated version a single time.

Re: No one buys books

#342

Post by makeitdouble »

kasey_junk wrote: post #298
makeitdouble wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business is business. If a publisher is refraining from going into ebooks altogether because of Amazon, when they get the option to direct sell and also access the other ebook platforms as well, I feel they're not long for this world either way.

Im not suggesting they are refraining from going into ebooks due to Amazon I’m suggesting it’s not a tried and true business model the world over. It’s mostly not a going business model outside of the profits Amazon brings in from it.

It's difficult to prove a negative. Ebooks are a growing market in the US, the EU and SEA (though TBH I have no idea about China amd India) It's been more than a decade that it's mainstream and takes about 10~20% of book sales depending on the country.

Amwzon's profits are still split with the publishers and publishers have their own venues + competitors (in particular outside of the US) so I'm not sure why Amazon's presence is a blow against the industry as a whole.

What more would be needed to see it as a validated business area?

Re: No one buys books

#343

Post by Ray20 »

treflop wrote: post #287
Anon4Now wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think a company that publishes books is going to be able to pivot to building an online book selling platform that easily. They just don't have anyone with the knowledge nor the capital to hire the people who then know who else to hire. Just like I don't see someone working in construction picking up programming or some software engineer picking up construction. It happens, but generally both are just not bui…

>They just don't have anyone with the knowledge nor the capital to hire the people who then know who else to hire. Doesn't seem to be true. They pay celebrities (for their boring bs books that no one read) enough to build a dozen online platforms

Re: No one buys books

#344

Post by somenameforme »

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.…

Another nice benefit of paper is that the company that sold it can't just bust down your door, steal the book, drop off a few bucks, and then go back along their merry way. Amazon did exactly this with, amongst other books, 1984. Such a perfectly appropriate book.

Re: No one buys books

#346

Post by sandspar »

mlsu wrote: post #117

Books are a vestigial organ. Nobody uses books as their primary mode of accessing information about the world anymore. What is interesting is that the cultural mores around this vestigial organ have persisted to such a great degree. Harry Potter Books are a psycho-social mechanism of self-construction more than an actual work of fiction. The phenomenon of "I am a bookish person who reads Harry Potter" as a psychologi…

You're talking about midwits or whatever. Millions of very intelligent people still get most of their knowledge from books. Books remain the highest octane fuel.

Re: No one buys books

#347

Post by shkkmo »

cm2012 wrote: post #327

319 comments and I don't see the simple fact that the article title is dead wrong. We are going through a massive book boom right now: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLSGuGOWoAArd-K.jpg:large . Book sales are the highest they've been in 20 years lol. So all the comments mourning books can relax.

The title is provocative clickbait, but the actual point is this:

> These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

Given that spending per capita, adjusted for intlation is only a couple of percent higher than they were 20 years ago, the "boom" isn't particularly impressive.

Re: No one buys books

#348

Post by Ray20 »

yreg wrote: post #90
keyle wrote: post #50

The same could be said about the game industry and the music industry. 1% of the industry thrives while the rest is a sinking stone. That said I bought three books this week, but it's a rare occurrence... and I'm pretty sure they're re-printed by Amazon.

Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever? Or do you mean boardgames? Those seem to be doing alright as well though.

>Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever?

Yes, but people also make more games than ever, and this "more" is way bigger.

Re: No one buys books

#349

Post by kstrauser »

wenc wrote: post #325
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 read paper books because I can flip back and forth without friction, and I can underline and scribble. I don't know why eReader interfaces make these two functions -- critical for deep reading -- so difficult. Kindle is optimized for linear reading only. So beach reading and long romances. But if you do the kind of reading that Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" proposes (skimming, inspectional reading, writing…

I truly don’t mean to be pedantic, but there’s a giant implicit “for me” in there. I do not want or need to scribble or write in my books for “deep reading”. It’s totally fine if you want to, but that’s your preference and not a general requirement everyone has.

I just finished “Moby Dick” on a Kobo. It’s no “Ulysses”, thank heavens, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it as a long romance or a beach read.

Re: No one buys books

#350

Post by kstrauser »

somenameforme wrote: post #344
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.…

Another nice benefit of paper is that the company that sold it can't just bust down your door, steal the book, drop off a few bucks, and then go back along their merry way. Amazon did exactly this with, amongst other books, 1984. Such a perfectly appropriate book.

None of my ebooks are infected with DRM. Lots of online stores will sell you ebooks without that nonsense.
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