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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#681

Post by ddingus »

hollywood_court wrote: post #585
dfxm12 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You speak the truth. We're experiencing this very same thing now in Alabama. Or one could simply look at Florida. Things aren't getting better here. The current GOP leadership is trying their best to be as regressive as possible. I feel like I am doing my son an incredible disservice by raising him in Alabama, but my wife refuses to leave while her mother is still living here.

Show him some alternatives. I grew up in a backward place too.

The single most valuable thing I learned is what is really possible to do. I got to see that because I ended up helping people of means who took me aside and showed me a look outside the place I was living.

For many, and this is true of my peer group, just knowing what is possible really mattered.

Of course I left town, found work and married someone I thought highly of and got to work building a better life.

Your son can do that too. Make sure he knows it.

Re: No one buys books

#682

Post by lannisterstark »

lithiumii wrote: post #399
lannisterstark wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they can do that with my calibre, and calibre-web collection lol.

But if you accidentally exposed your calibre-web online, they may be able to DMCA you?

Accidentally? My calibre-web is actually exposed online :P

It doesn't list any books that I have publicly though. All you'll see is a login prompt. Books? what books? You can't DMCA me because I only have gutenberg collections in there ;)

Re: No one buys books

#683

Post by BeFlatXIII »

devjab wrote: post #406
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…

I can. Book publishers are terrible and they always have been. At least that is the case here in Denmark. They game our library system, so that books they know won’t sell well but will be lent a lot at the libraries, like a lot of children books are priced ridiculously. These books are never actually put in stores, because why bother? But our libraries, have, to buy them and then pay fees to the publishing houses bas…

> Publishers pay your royalties by the size of your printed name on the front of the book. If your name isn’t there you get 0 royalties. If your name is smaller than the other names you get significantly less royalties. If your name is smaller, and, italic, you get almost no royalties and so on.

Who makes decisions for font cover design? Are they in a position to help out their friends with larger typefaces?

> They game our library system, so that books they know won’t sell well but will be lent a lot at the libraries, like a lot of children books are priced ridiculously. These books are never actually put in stores, because why bother? But our libraries, have, to buy them and then pay fees to the publishing houses based on the individual book prices.

This is also true of academic presses. Their market are university research libraries who will pay $400 for a two-volume tome on the spread of printing presses in the New World colonies.

Re: No one buys books

#684

Post by loup-vaillant »

bumby wrote: post #665
loup-vaillant wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You did say they want to remain high status, likely due to their over indexing in narcissism. Quote me, or I didn’t.

> The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing...latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists...who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status?...the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold...it's just obvious." Feel free to clarify, but to me, this reads as, "Rich people, being narcissists,…

Wrong reading. I never intended to make a generalisation out of 6% or even triple that amount. I just wanted to establish that rich assholes are a thing.

Re: No one buys books

#685

Post by shkkmo »

linuxftw wrote: post #664
shkkmo wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, Compl…

What do you think you've done to sway my opinion on the matter? There's a finite amount of money, and more pressing needs than letting people checkout paper books. Let's look at it like this: Current budget: $100; $90 going to library, $10 going to feeding the needy. We can assume that even the entire library's budget won't overcome the shortfall in feeding the needy. You're choosing to let more people be unfed in or…

> What do you think you've done to sway my opinion on the matter?

I thought correcting your facts would have that effect. If your opinion isn't fact based, I doubt there's anything I can do to change your opinion. All I can do is callout the misinformation you are spreading.

> Let's look at it like this: Current budget: $100; $90 going to library, $10 going to feeding the needy. We can assume that even the entire library's budget won't overcome the shortfall in feeding the needy.

Or... set tax rates sufficient to do both? Neither actually costs that much. Lack of funding for either has to do with politics, not practicality.

Re: No one buys books

#686

Post by munificent »

vidarh wrote: post #679
munificent wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of sales is still paper books. Do you have numbers for this? I wouldn't be entirely surprised if paper book revenue dwarfed ebook sales, but given that the latter has no marginal cost, I expect that profit from ebooks is still a very large slice of the pie. Anecdotally, with my two self-published books, ebook and PDFs make up a pretty large slice of the pie even though my books are known for prior…

To sales numbers, you're right that revenue skews it somewhat, but see [1] and [2]. Per 2022, print books added up 788 million sold, while e-books did did 191 million in 2020. 2020 was also a big jump up - in 2019 it was 170, after years of decline for e-book sales from a peak of 242 million in 2014. A large part of that is likely explained by the price gap narrowing, as publisher realised they were leaving money on…

This is a really good reply, thank you.

Re: No one buys books

#687

Post by beryilma »

Being mostly into technical books and textbooks, I WOULD BUY BOOKS if the publishers didn't goddamn charge $300 for an undergrad textbook.

I have no love for textbook publishers AND authors. They could all crash and burn for all I care.

The best real analysis textbook I've seen recently by Jay Cummings sells on Amazon for $16. So it is possible to (self)publish books that people can and would buy. Granted that the author probably doesn't live on this book's income, it points out that more affordable solutions can at least exist.

Re: No one buys books

#689

Post by yunwal »

I think novels also suffer from a lack of independent tastemakers. Book stores all went out of business, and none of the publishing houses have an identity beyond publishing what sells. I can't think of any book review blogs that have loyal followings, so you end up with the only exposure being pay-for-play. It's really difficult to discover new authors that I like with the current systems.

Re: No one buys books

#690

Post by bumby »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #684
bumby wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing...latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists...who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status?...the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold...it's just obvious." Feel free to clarify, but to me, this reads as, "Rich people, being narcissists,…

Wrong reading. I never intended to make a generalisation out of 6% or even triple that amount. I just wanted to establish that rich assholes are a thing.

You seem to imply they are a higher rate of rich assholes, no? The most cited research on this (Piff et al.) is highly flawed IMO and hasn’t been able to be replicated.

Or is your point that people are assholes in general? If the latter, I’m failing to see how that gets connected to rich people actively suppressing education, especially when, as you say, they are the most likely to donate money to those causes.

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