From what I can gather around town, major trade publishers have been having a pretty good year–a surprisingly good year, given a lingering recession and the widespread predictions of the death of the book business. And it seems pretty clear a primary reason, perhaps the reason, for our good results is the explosive growth of e-book sales.
The introduction of the iPad, slashed prices on the Kindle, now the color Nook and the long-awaited arrival of the Google e-bookstore–all these have helped to drive a massive increase in e-reading. While print book sales have declined in the past year, e-books, with lower per-unit costs, have more than taken up the slack. Even for houses where gross sales have declined, profits may well have increased. And many of us in the industry expect a bonanza after Christmas, when everyone who has just opened their gift Kindles and iPads loads them up with new e-titles to read. We could see a surge in e-book sales that makes the year look triumphant for book publishers.
I can’t help wondering if what we’re living through right now is like the “Phony War” of 1939-40–the period when war had been declared in Europe but Germany had yet to assault the countries to its west. The country-house parties went on as before, but the storm was coming.
Right now e-book sales are, not exactly gravy for publishers, but a profitable layer on top of print sales that have yet to fall off drastically. But that won’t last. As Mike Shatzkin starkly put it this week, “every book purchased online is another nail in the coffin of brick-and-mortar bookselling.” As the e-book trend continues, more bookstores are going to close–both independents and chain locations. Both B&N and Borders have been closing superstores and also devoting more space to non-book items, further reducing shelf space and inevitably book sales.
I don’t know when it will happen, but we’re likely to see bookstore sales go from “declining” to “plunging” in the near future. Shatzkin’s take is that “what brick-and-mortar booksellers will experience in the first six months of 2011 will be the most difficult time they’ve ever seen, with challenges escalating beyond what most of them are now imagining or budgeting for.” My impression is that most publishers are not budgeting for these challenges either. When they start to hit home, we may have to take our motor-cars back from the country houses and get ready for the Blitz.
P.S. If you believe, as I do, that independent bookstores–and even well-run chain bookstores for that matter–are a vital part of our literary ecosystem, please remember to do your Christmas shopping there.
Editor’s Note: Peter Ginna is publisher and editorial director of Bloomsbury Press. The above is reprinted, with permission, from his Dr. Syntax blog. PB
I’m not sure I’d classify it as a “war”… after all, publishers are at odds with themselves over publishing in print and digital formats… many independents are doing it themselves… and to an extent, both factions are ignoring the other. It’s maybe more like having two separate road races running on the same track at the same time.
It’s hard to tell when print sales will actually start to drop, and that’s partially because ebooks haven’t managed to come up with the “gimmick” that will get everyone to want ebooks and dump print. Until the gimmick hits, or even a clear average consumer price advantage of one over the other finally happens, the transition will continue to be slow… the cars will just keep running ’round and ’round the track, confusing us as to who’s winning which race against which opponent, and assuring us that the other race was never worth watching in the first place.
While an iconic image, the local family-owned and run bookstore was declining long before eBooks and their predecessors came along. To illustrate, think of the movie You’ve Got Mail and the small multi-generational bookstore being squeezed out by the massive warehouse-type store, and this despite the family-run place having a loyal local following.
Having been a proponent of local bookstores since childhood (when my folks would take us visiting them) I have the advantage of knowing some of the owners of these quaint literary corners, places which are correctly considered bastions of culture by those living within walking distance.
“We have a lot of loyal customers and a moderate amount of repeat business,” one shop owner told me. “These are folks who’ve been coming here for years. But, we don’t have much in the way of NEW customers.” I also learned that the majority of purchases in the small local bookshops were of ‘used’ books and those out for some years, not necessarily the top-ten best-sellers. For those titles the majority of consumers would either head to the library to snag a free copy for a few weeks, or they’d go to the big-box warehouse bookstore residing in the nearest strip-mall. And this was way back in the late nineties and early 2000’s, long before eBooks entered the picture with any force. The idea that digital literature taking hold in the minds of the younger generations is somehow to blame for local shops going out of business is ridiculous.
In our case it really boils down to convenience and the cost of driving/traveling; there are no small or privately-owned bookstores within a half an hour of where I live anymore. If there were I’d visit it/them with my own children, thus forming a quaint tradition in their minds of where one is supposed to get books. However, due to the scarcity of said type of shoppe, it is likely that that my kids will first go to Project Gutenberg to read, even over the library. They might also take a cue from me and become book reviewers and pick from the available list of eTitles and paper titles (if there are any left), circumventing the entire purchasing process altogether.
I have no affection for keeping book stores open artificially. Their time has come and it has gone. Time to move on and the ones who start working on that now will do a lot better than those that try to hang on too long and lose their braces.
Some will survive, but they will have to be a lot more innovative than they are now and printing on demand is the way forward.
Both printed books and screen books started from a zero market base. Print book sales have been growing for five hundred years and screen books for about ten, Since print books are better established they currently outsell screen books ten to one. If as many screen books are to be sold as print now, say in another ten years, that would mean a ten times larger e-market. Fine, but that doesn’t necessarily impose decline of print. A contrary correlate of increasing print as a result of digital technologies is more apparent.
Buy Local campaigns also play into print and screen sales. There is a link between print book sales and benefit to a local economy but there is no such benefit for screen book sales.
Thanks for these comments.
@ Steven: My reference to the “phony war” was meant to evoke how we’re continuing an old way of life even as huge changes are obviously bearing down on us, not a “war” between print and e-books. Both forms of book will run on parallel tracks for some time. But there is a competition between them, because very few readers are going to buy both forms of a single title. The problem for bookstores is that for many of them, even a modest erosion of sales-5 or 10 percent-can be the difference between profitability and red ink. And the problem for publishers is that when a bookstore closes, the decrease in sales through that location is not 5 percent but 100 percent. @Gary, that is why I think an increase in e-book sales means a decline in print. @Meredith, you’re right to note that the trend began even before e-books, at least with respect to indie stores. For publishers, the growth of chains outpaced the decline of indies, but print sales in the chains are shrinking too now. @Howard, although I do think the loss of many bookstores is inevitable in the short term, I have to confess I don’t quite have the Darwinian view of it that you seem to. I love bookstores and think each one is a precious resource for book lovers, and for its community. By the way, there are plenty of excellent, and yes innovative, booksellers out there and they’ll survive for a good long time.
Peter – yes I agree with your analysis. paper is not going to disappear any time soon. I believe it has a stickiness that will be with us for far longer than vinyl for example. But as you point out, the economics of the paper element of the publishing industry will change dramatically due to the nature of it’s distribution and sales system and the effect on margins and viability caused by small drops in sales.
What will matter a lot will be pricing. Will prices climb significantly as the sales decline ? how will this feed back into sales of eBooks ? How can prices be kept competitive or will the price gap just get wider and wider ?
I can see bookstores with small stocks of specialist paper books, built around a core Print On Demand service, being the most resilient in 10 or 15 years time.
You are right about my darwinian views on book stores 🙂 but I think it is also a generational thing. The younger generation just doesn’t have the emotional connection to stores that some older people do and that will wash through as time goes by.
In the name of God, Creator of Peace and Freedom
With due regards,
This is Parisa. I’m 28 years old. I am painter, graphic artist and author of the novel.
Please read a summary of my book, I need your help,
********************************
A summary of the my book :
This book is written about terrorism; about the death of many innocent Moslems, children and women by Al-Qaeda terrorists, led by Osama Bin Laden and his allies. Those who are used to kill numerous people, accusing them of being infidel, decapitate men and attach bombs to children and slab them into pieces along with lots of other people, with no reasonable excuse.
The main genre of this book is the painful and bitter memories of an American soldier who is sent to Iraq in 2008. He suffers innumerable pains there, his bodily organs get amputated and he becomes deaf and finally he commits suicide in Iraq because of the death of his friends, fellow fighters and his pregnant wife (an Iranian physician working in Red Cross). The soldier writes to his parents in New York and describes his memories and conditions. The happenings in the book occur when the phone lines are cut off in Baghdad due to a bomb attack by Al-Qaeda terrorists and the main character of the story is left with no other choice but to write a letter to his family and describe his conditions. The book consists of totally 24 letters.
Before the American soldier comes to Iraq, he believes that Moslems are all barbarian and terrorist. But throughout the story, and following his interaction with different people, he finds out that there are both good and bad people in all nations and religions, and that not all Moslems are barbarian and terrorist.
The book gives a full description of human disasters in (Fallujah) conducted by American forces in 2004, as well as the massacre of Iraqi people and soldiers by some Moslem terrorists, and all these are based on the realities in the history of Iraq after the occupation on March 23, 2003. This book also narrates the war crimes and genocide of Iraqi Kurds, committed by the Minister of Defense of the dissolved regime of the Ba’ath Party as well as his execution in 2009, a man who killed and buried alive 182,000 innocent people within 100 days.
The book also describes the savage massacre of 5,000 people during a bombardment of the City of Sardasht in Iran, the first city throughout the history of the world that was assaulted with chemical bombs by Saddam Hussein and all its civilians were dreadfully killed. This book also refers to the efforts of Sir. John Major (UK Prime Minister), and Francois Mitterrand (Ex-President of France), for passing the UN Resolution 688 and establishing a Green Zone in Iraq (the first safe area in the territory of a hostile country in the world) in 1990 and, and saving the lives of million people from the death which Saddam Hussein was in demand of.
I understand that the book I have written is not a happy one, because war and death of human beings is not something one can be happy with. The death of American soldiers in an alien country, the death of Iraqi people in Baghdad, Dayala, Rezvanieh, Fallujah, Najaf Ashraf and Musel are all dramatically painful and awful.
I conducted a one-year research about the happenings I have written in this book. I have presented all these happenings in a narrative way. I cried several times for the misery and death of all these people, while I was writing the book. This book has been written only for peace and the hope to eradicate terrorism, stop war and put an end to massacre of people.
The name of this book is : farewell to love
Unfortunately, I could not have the book published in my own mother tongue in Iran, as I was not given the book publication permit. This is the fifth book of mine for which the publication permit is not issued by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
The whole story is written in Farsi. I need your help & I wish to have the book translated into other languages and published in other countries along with the photos at the end of the book so that all people around the world would try to stop the war in Iraq. I hope there will be one day when Al-Qaeda terrorists have no further excuse for killing people and soldiers and hope that no country is occupied by any other state, with its oil and national resources being stolen.
The novel ‘s text is attached.
best regards
parisa haji nasiry
Tehran – Iran
June 26 , 2011
Parisa, this is hardly the place for spamming a discussion topic with ads. Have you heard of FictionPress.com? You can place sample chapters there for free and get feedback on your prose. Cheers.