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No one buys books

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Re: No one buys books

#701

Post by winternett »

greedo wrote: post #677
winternett wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my city certain people are often using them and leaving... uh... errant trace elements of themselves on said resources, especially the public-use computers... :/ I'm not really a germaphobe, but in the age of the pandemic, I think public resources like libraries are under serious threat, just like busses and public transit. It would be nice if there was some sort of reassurance that cleaning and disinfecting was t…

Lots of libraries let you volunteer if you're so inclined. Also, you can lobby for better library funding so that they can be staffed better. While you're at it, you need to find a better euphemism for homeless/unhomed people...

I was referring to specific people who use the computers to look at Pr0n, which does not at all indicate whether they are homeless or not.

Re: No one buys books

#702

Post by defrost »

leonroy wrote: post #699
atoav wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.

Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

The criticisms were telling though, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many others claimed he had a rich mans agenda, seeking fame rather than improvement, paying for buildings and not books, maintaining segregation rather than open access, paying for bricks was "cheaper" than paying taxes, etc.

Not undercutting the role of libraries, just pointing out that philanthropy from the wealthy can be a mixed bag of indirect control and agenda pushing at times, wrapped up in tidy looking tax avoidance multi layered "charity" arrangements.

Re: No one buys books

#703

Post by eslaught »

I wish I had gotten to the comment section earlier because the top-level summary of this article is simply incorrect.

The majority of the revenue of the Big 5 publishers may come from celebrities and repeat best-sellers. But the majority of the profit comes from the un-anticipated best sellers: books that the publishers offer low advances but end up going on to vastly out-sell expectations. While some of those books may have ended up in the "anticipated top selling books" category identified in the trial, the point is that their eventual sales are vastly greater than anticipated, for whatever level was offered.

This means that the rest of their publishing business is absolutely not a "vanity project": it is the business of publishing itself. The reason why these publishers have a backlist (older books that earn a profit long after release) is because of the unanticipated best-sellers. The trial data makes it very clear that publishers (and authors) are actually better at pricing the very high-end books and therefore the profits are typically less (because authors have more leverage to get a fair price in their initial negotiations).

So TL;DR: publishers hope to find promising, but under-rated, authors who may potentially go on to become best-sellers. They continue to fund the books of such authors (despite generally not making a profit) because the few that do fund the rest of the business. But (ironically) once such authors are actually established as best-selling franchise authors, those very same authors' ability to negotiate drives profit margins down, which drives the endless search for fresh talent in the publishing industry.

I feel like I finally need to complete my own analysis of the trial results, because I don't think this is well understood.

Re: No one buys books

#704

Post by makeitdouble »

kasey_junk wrote: post #547
makeitdouble wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ebook sales have trended down in the US since 2013[0]. They got a pandemic bump in 2020 which didn’t put them over the peak years in 2013/14 and like many things had a correction downwards afterwards[1]. Amazon maintains 70% of the US ebook marketplace and keeps a much bigger portion of the money from books published through their publishing arm than they do book published through the traditional publishers. They als…

I'll take your point: there seems to be a US specific problem with ebooks.

In particular, the lack of numbers from the dominant player (Amazon) makes trend analysis all the more difficult. Yet there's still an increase after 2020:

https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog/paper-books-vs-ebooks-statist...

On Amazon, are you merging publishing and distribution as a single activity ? I thought Amazon in the US only accepted self-publication under their name and the rest of the Kindle available titles are from each publishers only using Amazon as a printer/distributor.

E.g. who would you assign as 50 shades of grey's publisher for the ebook version?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007J4T2G8/ref=tmm_kin_swatch...

Re: No one buys books

#705

Post by atoav »

leonroy wrote: post #699
atoav wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.

Didn’t Andrew Carnegie, the very definition of rich and difficult to work for spend a huge chunk of his fortune funding 3000+ libraries? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Then he isn't rich, powerful and an unethical asshole.

People can be rich and try to do the right thing even if there seems to be no direct economic incentive to do so — and I applaud them if they do realize that money alone doesn't create a meaningful life. Yet I don't need to wonder whether a normal tax rate on billionaires would do even more for the libraries.

Re: No one buys books

#706

Post by eszed »

Tor3 wrote: post #369
eszed wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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; som…

I've done the DRM ripping in the past, but from what I've understood Calibre or other tools are unable to do that for the latest DRM variants Amazon is using. Is that correct? I would like to back up my entire Kindle collection as it is now.

As I understand it the problems are with Kindle Unlimited files, and it's more complicated if you don't actually own a Kindle (like, you have to use the Kindle app, but only some app versions work?). I don't have KU, and I import the files directly into Calibre from my Kindle and it all Just Works. Or it did last time I ripped a batch a month or two ago. Maybe something's changed in the meantime and I'm due for some frustration the next time I try. I dunno.

Re: No one buys books

#707

Post by atoav »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #525
jacobyoder wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> few even have wings of libraries named after us Public libraries? With easy access?

I don’t know if you have ever been to a public library, but basically all of them are prominently adorned with the names of their largest donors.

How many of those could you have built if you had taxed billionaires with a normal tax rate?

Re: No one buys books

#708

Post by nasmorn »

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…

If you can find people that do months of work for 500 in Denmark of all places then clearly this activity is understood to be a high status signal not a business opportunity. People are doing it for recognition or some vague notion of arriving as an artist. You can earn that in a week as a waiter

Re: No one buys books

#709

Post by loup-vaillant »

bumby wrote: post #690
loup-vaillant wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You seem to imply they are a higher rate of rich assholes, no?

It seems likely. But that's a detail, because I believe the more important effect is the contempt higher-class people can have towards lower-class people. Some of it may even come from cognitive dissonance. See, barring a few exceptions, one does not get rich just by working. One also has to exploit other people, to spoil them of a fraction of their added value. The richer you are the truer this gets, and then you have to find some way to look at yourself in the mirror despite that.

> actively suppressing education

I don't recall saying that. My exact words were: "I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious."

> especially when, as you say, they are the most likely to donate money to those causes.

I didn't say that either. My exact words were: "the largest contributor to pretty much anything has to be ludicrously rich. Because the only way to give that much, is to own even more."

Re: No one buys books

#710

Post by vik0 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #576
vik0 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want. This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this ap…

[flagged]

>It's not surprising that this push comes amid the understanding that the less educated one is, the more likely they are to vote R [2].

I saw the article, and it does indeed show this, however, I'm not sold that education is the only criterion when it comes to how someone votes... or does anything else, for that matter

It's far too simple of a cause-and-effect type of deal for this to be the only factor, or even, for this to be a factor at all, perhaps. The world is a bit more complex than chucking everything up to how someone does something based solely on their administered level of institutional education

I've been just a tiny bit more skeptical of all of these cause-and-effect type stories ever since I read Nassim Taleb

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