Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No one buys books

elysian.press

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 752 posts

Re: No one buys books

#21

Post by constantcrying »

sigio wrote: post #17

No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based. Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc.

The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

Re: No one buys books

#22

Post by vundercind »

Yep. No money in it short of not just getting optioned for TV or film, but an actual released production. Even then, a hit or two likely won’t pay as much as you’d think. Some pretty damn successful authors have boring day jobs, or stopped after a handful of “successful” books that didn’t make them much money and went back to a normal corporate career.

The other option is to crank out (ha, ha) short romance novels like a machine and market like mad. The money’s in hard work at writing porn, or in big broad-audience grand slams, probably written at a junior high reading level, with a small niche supporting a handful of authors in writing based-on-a-true-story stuff (bonus if “true crime” connection) aimed directly at getting optioned for film or tv (but that one’s very hard to break into, studios have some go-to authors for that stuff and you ain’t one of them)

Re: No one buys books

#24

Post by sigio »

constantcrying wrote: post #21
sigio wrote: post #17

No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based. Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc. The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

As I said, subscriptions, not buying

Re: No one buys books

#26

Post by vundercind »

constantcrying wrote: post #21
sigio wrote: post #17

No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based. Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc. The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

50 or 100 years ago, people read a hell of a lot more fiction than they do now.

Re: No one buys books

#28

Post by constantcrying »

sigio wrote: post #24
constantcrying wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc. The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

As I said, subscriptions, not buying

What is the Spotify of books?

Re: No one buys books

#29

Post by dakiol »

So, I usually think in terms of longevity. I do own some books, because in case computers don’t work anymore, well I can still read good stuff. I have plenty of PDFs/epubs in my laptop because the internet may not work anymore anytime. I do have some stuff in the cloud, but just for convenience (I don’t care if those files disappear).

Same with music, movies and video games. I want to be able to “run” stuff offline. Electricity is still a big dependency (i’m looking into solar panels)

Re: No one buys books

#30

Post by constantcrying »

vundercind wrote: post #26
constantcrying wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc. The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

50 or 100 years ago, people read a hell of a lot more fiction than they do now.

I suspect in the past they also read far more nonfiction.
Post reply on HN