No one buys books • Hacker News Board

Re: No one buys books

#211

Post by nate » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:22 PM UTC

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.…

Same. I recently got one of these wirecutter book lights: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/glocusent-reading... Does an amber color for bedtime reading, and now I' tearing through books again. It's so much easier to skim, skip, re-find something (yes, even without fancy search) and I just find myself reading faster with real books again. It's rekindled :) a love of books again I feel like I lost somehow only doing it on e-readers.

Re: No one buys books

#212

Post by endgame » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:23 PM UTC

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.

Re: No one buys books

#213

Post by rossdavidh » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:27 PM UTC

Almost everything this post describes is not new, not even 21st century new. E-books market share seems to be stuck at about 20% of the total market, where it's been since the early teens. The decline of the print book is more or less like the decline of vinyl albums, except that it never actually declined that much.

However, a lot more people want to be a best-selling author, than there are spots available, so most books don't sell much, and there are lots more authors who cannot get any advance at all. It was ever thus.

Re: No one buys books

#214

Post by tptacek » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:27 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #58

I've asked a number of agents online for two numbers: 1) How many unsolicited queries have you received, in whatever time period you like: month, quarter, year, forever? 2) How many turned into published books? None will provide that data, but I strongly suspect that the answer to #2 is "zero." They'll happily quote you BS quantities, like "a bunch" or "a handful." So as this article says, they spend their time chasi…

I don't think this is what the article says at all. It says that publishers make all their money celebrities and the backlist, and that those titles pay for all the midlist titles, most of which don't recoup their advances.

It's not like publishers can simply decide to focus on new and midlist authors. The books that sell, sell. The top line of this article is well described by its title.