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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#651

Post by bigstrat2003 »

matwood wrote: post #49
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same way, and also: I want to not have to pay a subscription fee forever. Once I have what I want, then that's it! I'm don't need to spend another dime. But if I use Spotify or whatever, I have to keep paying forever. It is a much worse deal.

The difference between music and books is time investment. New music comes out all the time, and I'm always discovering old music. A subscription works great for music because I can listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider myself a reader.

Yeah, if you're frequently getting new music then a subscription makes sense. My music library is pretty much static. I don't like the vast majority of new music, and I've already gotten the vast majority of old music that I care about. My music purchases are something like $30 (at most, usually much less) per year, which is way cheaper than Spotify.

Re: No one buys books

#652

Post by bombcar »

samspot wrote: post #626
pests wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are gems coming out today that will be considered great works by our descendants. By avoiding current authors or media you miss out on the cultural story and critique/commentary that influences all our media. Sure, the last 5000 years are interesting, but isn't right now pretty amazing too? You might accidently read the best book ever written but you won't know until history plays out. But I think it's importan…

Yeah, if you like sorting garbage. Which of the 1.5 million books published this year will you read? People routinely hide money in mattresses, so why not head to the landfill and start looking? I sometimes read/watch/play something if a friend recommends it. But I've no time/interest in sorting through the random deluge of media in the hope of finding diamonds. I'll let someone else find the diamond and tell me abou…

I'm trying to think back over "new releases" that I've read, and ... all of them have been by authors that I had already enjoyed reading some of their works.

It would have to be a technical book on a subject I'm interested in (and even then moderately rare) or something that someone I know well personally strongly recommended.

Re: No one buys books

#653

Post by shkkmo »

linuxftw wrote: post #631
wesselbindt wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioning helping the homeless in this convo has the same kind of vibe to me as conservatives only mentioning mental health when talking about gun control. They only ever mention mental health as a distraction from issues they do actually care about (like gun control), and have no interest in actually solving mental health issues. It's a typical way of bad faith arguing. That's just vibes though; there's a good…

I volunteer at my local food bank to help feed to homeless. I understand just how dire the need is. Libraries are a luxury we cannot afford right now, and frankly nobody uses them. Any 'feel good' purpose like 'literacy' is already met by public schools. There's already federal subsidies for internet and telephone for the needy, and the people that live too far away to get internet definitely don't have the money or…

> I volunteer at my local food bank to help feed to homeless. I understand just how dire the need is.

If you spent much deal actually dealing with the homeless themselves, you'd know how crucial a resource a library is for homeless people. For something you see as "dire", you don't seem to have even done anything as simple as google "libraries help homeless."

> Libraries are a luxury we cannot afford right now,

Completely false. Libraries are one of the areas of public spending where the return per dollar spent is highest. Libraries are social institutions we cannot afford not to fund.

> and frankly nobody uses them

Again, you seem to have failed to do basic research as libraries get a ton of use and genetally suffer from a lack of funding relative to their usage rates.

> There's already federal subsidies for internet and telephone for the needy, and the people that live too far away to get internet definitely don't have the money or means to drive into town to use the library.

Most poor people are urban and in dense enough areas to that easily access libraries could be (and often are) available.

> I would be willing to compromise on small buildings that function as internet cafes that are free to use for the public, we can get rid of all the excess staff and books, though.

Oh, how generous of you. Why don't you go meet some librarians and learn about what they actually do before you write off their usefulness.

Re: No one buys books

#654

Post by vl »

bumby wrote: post #629
vl wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries are funded from local taxes, this is why there is a difference.

Are you implying the OP was over-sampling on wealthier Michigan neighborhoods? Because I read their quote as applying to Michigan as a whole, and there are certainly parts of Michigan that are poor enough to have strained local taxes.

Not at all. I literally mean that libraries are funded by communities (i.e. private groups, towns, counties, states), and some communities chose to fund them lavishly and some not to fund them at all.

Re: No one buys books

#655

Post by loup-vaillant »

bumby wrote: post #618
loup-vaillant wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the wealthy don't fund something, it's because they're narcissists. If they do, it's because of statistics. I said no such strawman, and it's not my main point anyway. My main point is: the idea that rich & powerful people will generally do what it takes to stay rich & powerful is not conspiracy thinking, it's common sense. The idea that a sizeable proportion of them will resort to unethical (even lethal) means…

You did say they want to remain high status, likely due to their over indexing in narcissism. Even if that’s not your main point, the logical leap that we seem to disagree on is that promoting illiteracy is the means to that end. Carnegie does provide evidence against that, as does all the libraries and educational buildings that are named for wealthy donors. There’s a philosophical argument that all altruism is actu…

> You did say they want to remain high status, likely due to their over indexing in narcissism.

Quote me, or I didn’t.

Re: No one buys books

#656

Post by veunes »

al_borland wrote: post #567
grepLeigh wrote: post #332

From the article: >>> "Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want?" I sincerely hope nothing "disrupts" public libraries in my lifetime. As a California resident, I can walk into ANY public library in the state and get a free library card with access to physical books, audiobooks, ebooks. Some branches have laptops, hotspots, tablets, e-readers available to borrow. My local…

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

Me too, and it's today's digital age, where information is readily available online

Re: No one buys books

#657

Post by veunes »

linuxftw wrote: post #569
al_borland wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

It's almost like it's a totally unnecessary public expenditure at this point, and those funds could be used for, IDK, feeding the homeless?

libraries remain valuable. They provide access to a wide range of resources to people who are not able to get it

Re: No one buys books

#658

Post by veunes »

thefaux wrote: post #577
linuxftw wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like it's a totally unnecessary public expenditure at this point, and those funds could be used for, IDK, feeding the homeless?

I'm pretty sure that wasteful library budgets is not a significant factor causing hunger or homelessness.

You're absolutely right. Library budgets are typically a small fraction of government spending I think

Re: No one buys books

#660

Post by araes »

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…

There are responses to every single one of these. Similar to Radioshack (3D printers, drones, Arduino, Raspberry PI), and Intel's (mobile, GPUs, foundries, AI) bankruptcies or "lost decades".

Distribute Books - They could have built a competitive distribution system by responding to what was an obvious aggressive threat. Amazon founded in 94', public by 97', buying book sellers by 98'. Four years, and Amazon was going International and buying book sellers.

e-books - Great. Sell e-books yourselves. Sell better e-books with Publisher extras.

Scanned catalog - Multiple responses. Legally inclined, lawsuits before it was all irreparably scraped (or afterward). Tech inclined, scrape your own stuff and make it available. Culturally or historically inclined, donate the texts to Gutenberg or a museum so the scraping doesn't get them much.

Authors have their own followings - Interact. "Hi, this is so-and-so from PRH, that's a neat idea for the author's work, and we'll discuss trying to work it into the next book launch." There's probably authors who follow authors, "Any of you wanna write a book?"

Cash advances - The cash advances are broke anyways. One of main points of the article. 70% of spending goes to 1% of authors. Try a slightly less power-law distribution. Maybe something a little less than x^60... PRH alone gave 55% of all advances in $1,000,000+ land. Have your own Kickstarters, or crowdfunding site. Arrange crowdfunding campaigns with marginal authors (for better author %). Work with fans directly so fans can put up the advance with pre-orders. Lots of alternatives to wringing their hands. (If Bates White Economic Consulting is correct, then 95% of money likely goes to 5% of authors).

What this article told me was the publishing industry has a bad case of "try to spend zero work, while making infinite $". 'if the platform is there for the advertising, then the spend might be lower.' 'Does the best selling author have the best marketing budget? No. Why? She's the queen of TikTok.' (she does her own marketing)

Ideally, the authors get their own loans from the bank, print their own materials, arrange their own distribution, put out their own marketing, and then we collect a vague value-add for putting our logo somewhere.

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