[HN Gopher] No One Buys Books
___________________________________________________________________
No One Buys Books
Author : AlbertCory
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-04-22 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elysian.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elysian.press)
| sigio wrote:
| 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 ;)
| constantcrying wrote:
| 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?
| sigio wrote:
| As I said, subscriptions, not buying
| constantcrying wrote:
| What is the Spotify of books?
| exe34 wrote:
| Amazon/Adobe DRM? They can stop working at any time.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Neither of these provides books as a subscription service
| as far as I am aware.
| skydhash wrote:
| Amazon has Kindle Unlimited and O'Reilly have/had Safari
| vundercind wrote:
| 50 or 100 years ago, people read a hell of a lot more fiction
| than they do now.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I suspect in the past they also read far more nonfiction.
| vundercind wrote:
| I wouldn't bet on it, unless we're counting user-
| generated posts online, and clickbait "articles". Which,
| maybe we should.
|
| [edit] JFC I misread your sense of "read", I think we
| agree.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Updated my post. I don't think I encountered that "bug"
| in the English language before.
| matwood wrote:
| True for fiction books. But if you think about fiction
| generally, as the poster said, the medium has changed.
| People still love fiction, but now it's movies and shows.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| It seems obvious that books lost some market share.
|
| People have a limited amount of time for entertainment and
| have a lot more choice between Netflix, YouTube, Books and
| thousands of other things than they did back then.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yes, that is what I meant. Books as a medium is just a much
| smaller industry with far fewer customers.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Ebooks and audiobooks.
| constantcrying wrote:
| As far as I can tell eBooks aren't significantly more
| popular than physical books. Surely the publishers cited in
| the article wouldn't have neglected that topic if it was
| actually a major revenue stream.
|
| As far as audiobooks go I don't know. Do you have any
| numbers?
| koito17 wrote:
| n = 1, but I purchase physical books, comics, references, etc.
| under two circumstances:
|
| - cannot find an easy way to de-DRM media available on online
| stores. I want the ability to copy epub files across my devices
| and read offline.
|
| - the digital version is a poor-quality scan. This frequently
| happens with comics.
|
| This is embarrassing to discuss normally, but an additional
| perk of physical comics and light novels is that I can look at
| the obi and get reminded what I was doing in the past, where I
| was in the past, what was happening in the past, etc.
| especially for those which I have finished reading. The subset
| of my friends with similar interests as me tend to discard the
| obi, since it becomes bothersome while reading. I have the
| habit of removing the obi while I am reading something, then
| add it back when finished reading the entire thing. Things like
| this can't really be done with digital media, especially
| subscriptions.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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)
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Haven't libraries already been a "Netflix of books" for millenia
| now?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Some libraries have movie sections, making them the Netflix of
| DVDs, in an odd twist.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Mine doesn't have this book, anyway.
|
| $94 for a _used_ copy /s
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Did you mean to read <insert related book that's not in the
| subscription>?
| paxys wrote:
| How much of the population has access to well stocked
| libraries?
| lolinder wrote:
| Most libraries that people have access to are more like
| "Disney+ for books". They have a limited selection of extremely
| mainstream books. If you're happy to make do with whatever they
| have on offer then you're fine, but if you want something
| specific you'll have to go out and buy it.
|
| Back in the DVD days and before everyone broke ranks and tried
| to start their own service, the thing that made Netflix great
| was that no matter what you wanted _they had it_. Having no
| retail footprint meant they could stock everything without
| having to compromise. Libraries don 't have that advantage.
| bombcar wrote:
| The entire book industry rides on the backs of bibles, hobbits,
| and extremely ravenous caterpillars.
|
| Seems almost poetic, somehow.
| jackstraw14 wrote:
| how many years of print dominance?
|
| welcome our overlords.
| vundercind wrote:
| I gotta admit: I rarely make time for any recent fiction. Too
| busy catching up on the last 5,000 years. I don't expect that
| to change before I die.
|
| Film has a similar problem--there are plausibly low-thousands
| existing films worth my time, a whole lot of them 30+ years
| old. I could never watch a film made after 2000 and not run out
| of good entertainment in my lifetime. They're damn lucky the
| Mouse got copyright extended to a century or more.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| read "the sarah book" or "crapalachia" by scott mcclananhan
| if you want to read fiction from a living author that should
| be included in your reading list for the past 5k years of
| language arts.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's also a highly effective sorting algorithm - anything
| still talked about ten years after it came out is probably
| worth some time.
|
| I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively
| quickly see all US animated kids movies ...
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The Lindy Effect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
| matwood wrote:
| And if you add in TV shows, there's more great content out
| there than I'll ever have time to watch.
| xg15 wrote:
| Well, if there's any comfort: The AI will definitely read your
| book...
| dakiol wrote:
| 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)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I'm the same way, and also: I want to not have to pay a
| subscription fee forever. Once I have what I want, then that's
| it! I'm don't need to spend another dime. But if I use Spotify
| or whatever, I have to keep paying forever. It is a much worse
| deal.
| matwood wrote:
| The difference between music and books is time investment.
| New music comes out all the time, and I'm always discovering
| old music. A subscription works great for music because I can
| listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider
| myself a reader.
| bombcar wrote:
| And even with books it becomes much easier to say "I'll
| reread the lord of the rings on this flight" than it is to
| take a wild risk on an unknown book and author.
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think of cable/satellite/streaming tv in the same way
| as Spotify?
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| I'm currently writing a book about independent thinking and I
| have zero expectations that it will sell even a single copy.
| However, the net gain I will get from having completed the goal
| of writing the book is invaluable to me personally.
| gizmo wrote:
| I have read a couple of books on that subject and they all
| disappointed. I will gladly buy your book if it's original
| work.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| That's encouraging. It's definitely not fluff and original.
| The feedback would be valuable even if you don't end up
| liking it.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I had this idea for a hard science fiction story that I have
| been thinking about for years. Nobody else is going to write
| it, so I started. 20 000 words in my beta readers say it is
| good, so I think I will continue. And I don't expect to sell
| it, but I want to know what happens and so do the beta readers.
| So on we go.
| mbbbackus wrote:
| Currently in the same boat! When you say beta readers, do you
| mean other friends/writers or like people on twitter
| greenie_beans wrote:
| hell yeah, keep on writing!
| mysteria wrote:
| You really have to write it for yourself if you want to keep
| going - unless you're lucky or have a large following already
| it's hard to get a lot of readers. I've written stories and
| serials and posted them on social media, my personal site,
| etc. (I release them as Creative Commons works) and few
| people read them. Self-published authors who want to make a
| living typically have to do a _lot_ of promotion to get a
| chance.
|
| Also there are times when I decide I want to read my own
| stuff for entertainment instead of a published novel. And the
| joy I get from that keeps me writing.
| bhaney wrote:
| Can I be a beta reader? Always looking for more good hard
| sci-fi.
| thyrsus wrote:
| Does this include technical books? O'Reilly and Manning seem to
| have substantial customers. Or is the licensing of PDFs excluded
| from such figures?
| bombcar wrote:
| Technical books are part of it, and O'Reilly can probably do
| much more accurate forecasting on their titles than others do,
| but they still have total reach problems.
|
| If I think of all the technical things I've done, there are
| some I've bought lots of books for, and others I've never
| bought a book at all, including some relatively major
| languages.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Turn it around:
|
| How much new information is there published in book form each
| year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read?
|
| How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate
| each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be
| selected for this?
|
| Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books
| traditionally take up has been replaced by:
|
| - encyclopedias --- Wikipedia
|
| - magazines/newspapers --- Facebook and social media
|
| - dime store novels --- fan fiction and webcomics
|
| Time was that the way to be successful w/ a self-published book
| was to manage to get it bought by the ~9,000 library systems in
| the U.S. --- how many of these books are being purchased by
| libraries?
| ozim wrote:
| In Poland we publish 9000 new books each year, of course
| initial runs are like 500-1k copies. Not sure how it breaks
| down in detail on types like science publications and else but
| average person reads 1 book a year, avid readers read 7 and
| above but they are 1% of the population.
|
| Just some stats as I watched discussion on this topic. I think
| the question was rhetorical but feels like a nice thing to add.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I was reaching for.
|
| Curious what the distribution is for types of books.
|
| In the U.S., bookstores lose money almost the entire year ---
| only making money for the Christmas holidays.
| roughly wrote:
| > How much new information is there published in book form each
| year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read?
|
| > How much leisure time does the average person choose to
| dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s)
| will be selected for this?
|
| I mean, the thing is, people aren't reading books, they're
| reading instagram. We haven't substituted one knowledge-
| accumulating method for another, we've replaced books with
| social media. If you want to talk about which one generates or
| propagates more information-as-knowledge, that's an interesting
| conversation, but I think the effective mechanism here is
| someone figured out how to hypercharge the dopamine roller-
| coaster to a degree that books just can't compete.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I believe another factor is frequency of moving, because that'd
| disincline people from buying significant amounts of any kind
| of heavy and/or bulky media, of which books are both. More than
| a small bookshelf's worth is a real pain to haul around.
| keyle wrote:
| The same could be said about the game industry and the music
| industry. 1% of the industry thrives while the rest is a sinking
| stone.
|
| That said I bought three books this week, but it's a rare
| occurrence... and I'm pretty sure they're re-printed by Amazon.
| yreg wrote:
| Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than
| ever?
|
| Or do you mean boardgames? Those seem to be doing alright as
| well though.
| keyle wrote:
| I've made games. Just look at the 30 games that come out on
| steam every day of the week.
| yreg wrote:
| 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. I will do anything instead of reading the text. Meanwhile
| with a paper book I don't have an urge to flip a page back and
| forth and observe how it behaves. I can focus on the text.
|
| Not sure why I am this way.
| acchow wrote:
| These sound like common traits for ADHDers.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Paper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip
| through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections.
|
| I can skim through a shelf full of books in a way that I'm just
| not able to with ebooks, even with stuff like full text search
| available in Calibre.
| SubmarineClub wrote:
| Another benefit to paper books, in my experience, is it's a
| lot easier to remember the rough location of a particular
| passage (towards the front, middle, near the end, etc.) than
| with digital
|
| A progress bar really doesn't replace the context of the
| stack of pages behind and ahead of your current page.
| skydhash wrote:
| I classify skimming as a "distracting" activity. I always ask
| myself: What information do I need? And then it's very easy
| to get to the relevant passage. And outlines are there for a
| reason (PDF Expert can edit them) so navigating between the
| same file is not that cumbersome for me. I do agree that the
| experience is more pleasant with a paper book, but in a
| focused session, the result is pretty much the same.
|
| Skimming is great for building a mental map, but that is a
| separate activity than reading to learn. And it can be done
| digitally too, just differently.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| The older I get the less I trust myself to know how to
| administer or even to care how to work any current or future
| reading e-device.
|
| A printed book requires light as just about it's only
| dependency!
|
| I definitely agree with you about the distractions of digital
| devices. Switching to a book is a focused mode.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| When I'm on vacation, I always read paper books.
|
| Because I want minimal complexity. (Usually in the tropics,
| often with rum and a hammock)
|
| Dead tree books' short term failure modes are water and fire,
| and once failure is confined to emergencies-that-are-already-
| emergencies they impose no additional cognitive burden.
|
| Also, I suspect the physical friction involved in "swiping
| away from" paper books helps reset my dopamine baseline /
| memory, but that's just suspicion from having lived pre-
| smartphone.
|
| PS: Also, re: environmental impact. eBay and Amazon sell tons
| of used books. Sure you're shipping them around, but I really
| buy new these days.
| dripton wrote:
| I'm just the opposite. One of the worst things about
| vacations was having to carry along all those books or take
| a detour to a bookstore (if there were any) to buy more.
| Now I just carry a single small e-reader. It's a great
| savings in terms of cargo space.
|
| I don't consider an e-ink reader very complex. You charge
| it once in a while, download books to it once in a while,
| and otherwise it's basically a book except it remembers
| what page you were on.
| criddell wrote:
| The older I get, the more I appreciate being able to select a
| larger font with my Kindle. I love books, but the
| accessibility features of a modern ereader are pretty great
| too.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I've been putting off glasses for as long as I can. I
| suspect I'll return to my Kindle again in the future for
| this reason. It's good to be reminded that both things can
| coexist.
| roughly wrote:
| I do the same - I far prefer paper books for reading, and
| mostly because it makes an enormous difference in my ability to
| focus.
|
| Re: the ecological side - I'm not actually convinced that a
| paperback book is markedly more of an ecological burden than an
| e-reader and the rest of the associated infrastructure. I think
| it's possible the e-reader pencils out in the long term, but I
| think a full lifecycle accounting of the energy and resources
| required to create, use, and dispose of an e-reader would be
| markedly higher than one would suspect, and I think people
| replace them more often than necessary.
|
| Books, on the other hand, are trees. Bury 'em in your yard when
| you're done with them and the fungi will know what to do to
| recycle them.
| karmakaze wrote:
| This is not good news. I just got my first eInk reader today
| and first thing I did was go through all the navigation setup
| pages.
|
| I have one professional development book and was going find a
| work of fiction to start. Hope it works out.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| FWIW - This (GP post) is not my experience with eReaders.
| Not sure if they have the eInk one or not (like the Fire or
| tablet ones), but I have the eInk sort.
|
| Anyway, I really like it because it's far lighter weight
| than a paperback, easier to hold, and I can have like the
| entire library on there and take it with me. I don't
| experience the distraction that they are referring to,
| because there's really not anything else to do except read
| my book. How much time can I spend on settings? Browsing my
| library? As far as brightness I leave it alone mostly and
| don't think about it unless it's irritatingly one way or
| the other.
|
| I have no idea what "navigation setup pages" are - I've
| been through several different Kindles and I pretty much
| just take them out of the box and start reading. There's
| nothing to "set up" outside of logging into my Amazon
| account.
|
| Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
| WolfeReader wrote:
| A lot of the posts here are just individuals' opinions, not
| universal experiences. Yours may well be different!
|
| Personally, I carry an e-ink reader everywhere and read it
| every time I get a spare minute or so. It's done wonders
| for my reading habits. And unlike this topic's creator, I
| basically set the font and formatting once and almost never
| mess with them again.
| roughly wrote:
| Everybody's different! I prefer to read on paper, I know
| many other people who prefer to read on their kindle.
| Whatever works for you is the right answer for you!
|
| I still use ebooks when I travel - I'll usually have one or
| two actual physical books with me, but I'll also have a few
| loaded up on my iPad in case I get bored or finish them
| early.
| antonyt wrote:
| Chiming in with the others to say that my experience with
| e-readers has been great. Physical books can grow to be a
| huge burden over the years.
|
| For me personally, e-readers have not caused any loss of
| focus. In fact, the integrated dictionaries often keep me
| MORE focused than the interruption represented by pulling
| out a dictionary or googling a word.
|
| I'll acknowledged is a tactile joy to physical paper that
| is lost when using an e-reader, but for me it's well worth
| the trade-off for the the portability and space saved.
| skydhash wrote:
| I use my iPad and my Kobo for digital reading. I have paper
| version of "important" books (stuff I'd like to read if I don't
| have power), but some are unwieldy (Algorithms by Cormen et
| Al).
|
| I prefer e-ink for reading, but it's too slow for my learning
| workflow. I highlight and mark interesting stuff, that I export
| later to condense and reflect upon. And that is cumbersome on
| an e-reader. There's also the matter of size. I generally like
| the PDF version of technical books as they're typeset well, but
| my e-reader is too small for them. So I use my iPad for those
| (Distraction is handled by the fact that I read those in short
| focused sessions).
|
| But for fiction books, the e-reader is perfect. I don't
| highlight text in those books, I just read. Any other operation
| is slow enough that I just can't fiddle with it. And it's
| perfect for long sessions of reading as it does not project
| light in my eyes. It's light, so I just bring it with me
| everywhere.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| I recommend the Fujitsu Quaderno. Great for marking up
| textbooks on A4 size pages, and _far_ lighter than a book
| itself.
| Koshkin wrote:
| An Apple-esque expensive stuff. (A pen sheath, $32.)
| grecy wrote:
| I've published a few self-published books on Amazon about my
| global adventures. While sales are not making me rich, they
| certainly do sell month after month.
| bombcar wrote:
| Self-publishing avoids the biggest single cost, the advance!
|
| It can actually be moderately successful for the right type of
| author.
|
| I've always thought the "book collection of webcomics/blogs"
| has to be moderately predictable as to sales.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Anecdotally I'm buying and reading more books now than at any
| other point in my life.
|
| Reading gets me away from a computer screen, which I would
| otherwise stare at from sunrise to sundown.
|
| I tend to be a late adopter. Once things are close to obsolete I
| usually get involved!
|
| Although books have the disadvantage of being a similar focal
| distance as a screen and for this reason is still bad for my
| eyesight!
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| I buy paper books with cash to prevent tracking of my reading
| habits.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Calvin and Hobbes, 1993 -
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/12/07
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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 chasing
| celebrities, online influencers, and friends of friends. And not
| making a whole lot of money anyway.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| You used to pitch your book to publishers. Now you pitch your
| audience.
| bluedays wrote:
| Just going to drop this here:
| https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-...
|
| This comes up constantly and it's just wrong.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| On the flipside, it's nice that there's a thriving small and fine
| press community out there with lots of news press' appearing over
| the last few years and some really beautiful books being
| published.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >> Obviously, given the number of people searching on Amazon for
| products, that gives them a huge advantage because when people go
| onto Amazon, they--if the book isn't there for what they are
| searching for, they could create that book.
|
| This is a really weird thing to say. It seems to assume that
| people are indifferent to the quality of the writing in the books
| they read.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Yeah. I'm a member of the Furry Writer's Guild and in a few
| anthologies. This is a discussion that comes up occasionally. The
| sad fact is a lot of people don't read and furry fandom is pretty
| niche market to start with. Art and music are a lot easier to
| consume.
|
| It's really easy to get disillusioned and give up.
| lrvick wrote:
| Most books today are sold with DRM and when the DRM servers are
| deactivated the books stop working.
|
| This happened with the Microsoft ebooks store and has happened
| with countless other DRM media.
|
| Sometimes books are automatically revised, or censored. Sometimes
| accounts holding DRM licenses are deleted or deactivated by
| mistake.
|
| The only way to actually own a book these days is to buy it on
| paper, or from one of the rare few publishers that do not use
| DRM.
|
| If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book
| scanner or send it to a scanning service.
| doug_durham wrote:
| The books sold through Apple Books are all sold without DRM.
| That's pretty standard now.
| II2II wrote:
| I am fairly certain that most, if not all, mass market ebooks
| use DRM tied to the software. If the servers go, the books will
| be fine for as long as the software continues to work.
|
| There are also authors and publishers who offer books without
| DRM.
|
| Please note: I do not like DRM. I simply view disinformation as
| a good way to loose good will from those who would otherwise
| support a cause.
| npilk wrote:
| > If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book
| scanner or send it to a scanning service.
|
| Well, technically there's a third option...
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Kobo and Google Play both tell you up-front if a book has DRM
| or not. And very often - not "rare"-ly as you claim - buying
| directly from the publisher results in a DRM-free ebook.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _Q. And Penguin Random House pays Amazon to improve its search
| results?_
|
| >> _A. There is something that is available to our publishers,
| it's called Amazon Marketing Services, AMS, and all publishers
| can spend money and give it to Amazon to have hopefully better
| search results._
|
| >> _-- Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House_
|
| Wait, "hopefully better"?
|
| What the hell is Amazon selling, magic publishing advertising
| snake oil?
|
| If I'm paying for placement, I'd expect something more than hope.
| paxys wrote:
| 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 Kickstarter give 10x more.
|
| What's sad though is that publishers have historically had one
| power that would have been unassailable - editorial judgement.
| They could have sustained their brands on quality. Imagine a
| world where you wanted something good to read, and among all the
| garbage out there saw a title and went "this one is by Simon &
| Schuster, it _has_ to be good ". Instead they went all in on pulp
| bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good
| authors, and here we are.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering
| how shafted they got by tech.
|
| Publishers have been shafting authors for centuries. I'll shed
| no tears on their behalf.
| Spivak wrote:
| Prior to the digital age where it's possible for the author
| to self-publish the publisher was handling 99% of the actual
| business of selling books and giving authors 15%.
|
| So while I think it's been hard to make a living as an author
| I don't think it's necessarily the publisher's fault. Better
| to be the one's selling shovels than the ones mining for
| gold.
| thfuran wrote:
| >the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of
| selling books
|
| It seems to me that you're rather underestimating the
| importance of having something to put in the book.
| mcphage wrote:
| > You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it
| better and cheaper.
|
| That just makes it Easter for publishers. The major problem
| with Amazon is monopsony, not easier distribution.
|
| > You print books? Well we have e-books now.
|
| Which have to be purchased ultimately from the publishers, so
| again, they're still there making money, they just don't need
| to bother printing books anymore. You'll note they're not any
| cheaper.
|
| > You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on
| social media and can reach them directly.
|
| I think this is confusing cause and effect. Authors turned to
| social media because publishers weren't doing a great job
| marketing, not because it makes publishers unnecessary.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| IMO there are still quality publishers, but they are small and
| tend to focus on specific topics. Two that I'm aware of,
| although I'm sure there are more out there:
|
| - https://lostartpress.com
|
| - https://tinhouse.com
| vram22 wrote:
| Another one is Other India Press.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_India_Press
|
| https://www.otherindiabookstore.com/about
|
| I got to know about them through coming across the book
| Tending the Earth, by Winin Pereira.
|
| I have some background in organic gardening, and think it is
| a very good book.
|
| It is about more than just organic gardening, though.
| Anon4Now wrote:
| Businesses that remain stagnant don't get shafted so much as
| outmaneuvered. Instead of investing and pivoting, they cling to
| the old business model. Short term, their decisions make
| financial sense, but long term, it's a death sentence.
|
| Meanwhile, Amazon is looked at as the behemoth in the industry,
| yet it probably isn't thought of as an online book store /
| publisher by most people. I think of so many things before I
| get to, "Oh yeah, they also sell books."
|
| The one piece of information that I wish the article had
| mentioned is the age demographics of avid book readers. My gut
| tells me the market has dropped significantly in the last ~25
| years, but I'd like to see the data.
| vram22 wrote:
| I saw the second part of your comment coming, while reading the
| first part - in my mind's eye :)
|
| Uncanny valley, or maybe I just read the signals and
| interpreted them right.
| ergonaught wrote:
| It's me. I'm No One.
|
| Because I buy them every week. So does my wife. I guess we are No
| One.
| tolciho wrote:
| Being no one might help you escape that cyclops.
| jaberwooky wrote:
| Books are like the wayback machine. You can reread authors as
| they actually wrote their oeuvres without editing from modern day
| overzealous publishers who censor or otherwise alter the
| originals.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I'm in a very heavy library family; we are checking out and
| reading a few hundred books per year between all of us.
|
| Yet we still buy a few books, and I bet that if we made an
| inventory of the books we currently own that are in the house, it
| would number in the hundreds. But... most were purchased
| secondhand. I take my daughter to the bookstore every few months;
| it is always busy. While she is browsing, I also look around. I'd
| buy half a dozen or more books on each visit if it weren't for
| the price. At retail price, books aren't a good deal. Even buying
| a paper copy of a public domain book will run $15-20. Why?
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > book will run $15-20
|
| Everybody needs to get paid, and everybody needs to make a
| profit.
|
| The folks that store the books (think Wholesale), the
| movers/couriers, the retail that has to pay rent/employees/etc
| _and_ make a profit.
|
| The consider that (depending on the country) there is a VAT on
| that book. It slowly adds up.
|
| I remember in Brighton back in the 90s I had found a second
| hand bookstore, that had 5x the books per sqm comparing to the
| Barnes & Noble in the center of London. B&N had wide corridors,
| the shelves on the perimeter were all the way to the ceiling,
| but the non-walled ones were 1.5m high. And considering that
| they wanted the books to look cool, they were nicely spaced.
|
| Now when you compare this to the second hand bookstore, where
| presentation is not 'a thing'.. you got many-many more books
| per sqm, and the authors/publishers don't need to get paid
| again. But still.. a second hand book will always been 1/3 to
| 1/4 of a new book (from own experience).
|
| EDIT: I sometimes think that if my life takes a very dark turn,
| and for whatever reason I end up poor and alone, I will find
| the smallest/cheapest possible village that has a public
| library back to my country of origin, and I will be spending
| max amount of hours in that library.. free wifi, free
| heating/cooling, and ALL the books I can read(hey, my name is
| Henry Bemis after all!!)
| mlsu wrote:
| Books are a vestigial organ. Nobody uses books as their primary
| mode of accessing information about the world anymore.
|
| What is interesting is that the cultural mores around this
| vestigial organ have persisted to such a great degree. Harry
| Potter Books are a psycho-social mechanism of self-construction
| more than an actual work of fiction. The _phenomenon_ of "I am a
| bookish person who reads Harry Potter" as a psychological _thing
| that people do_ is larger and more significant than the actual
| story of Harry the young wizard. Likewise, the _phenomenon_ of
| "I am a successful luminary who has written a book" is more
| important than the actual content of the book itself. Celebrities
| paying ghostwriters to write books and going to book signings to
| sign a book for people who will never actually read the book. A
| perfectly airtight simulacra.
| zilti wrote:
| Most Harry Potter fans have never even read the books, but just
| seen the films, further supporting your argument
| mikl wrote:
| Hello, I'm no-one.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The only major reading I do these days is via audiobooks, I
| simply read them faster than via visually looking at the page. It
| might be my attention span, but somehow audio is just faster to
| literally cram words into the mind at high speed than consciously
| moving your eyes over a page.
| simonblack wrote:
| Paper Books for random-access Technical Reference.
|
| Electronic Books for General 'Beginning-to-End', or 'Story-
| Telling' reading.
|
| In general, though most books can be either paper or electronic
| depending on personal convenience at the time. It's not a 'Black
| and White', 'One Thing or the Other' choice. Both formats are as
| good as the other if need be.
|
| I use both. "Works for Me."
| tstrimple wrote:
| I wish my daughters would stop reading books (not really) so I
| could stop buying them all the time (happy to pay this expense).
| I was worried for a while because my wife and I are both
| voracious readers, but none of our children seemed to be
| developing a similar love for literature. That changed
| practically overnight. They went from Anime to Manga to YA lit to
| full blown novels in less than a year. Their tastes are still
| very particular, so we can't reliably go to a used book store to
| find things they are willing to try. But each time we go to buy
| them books, their selections get a little more varied than
| before.
|
| The latest game is "How many books can I get?". I think they know
| perfectly well that I'll buy them as many books as they want
| because I've never told them I wouldn't buy them a book. So in a
| way it's them exploring their own impulsiveness and desire to
| consume versus what they consider to be reasonable. I always make
| them set their own limit. But I'm also fortunate to be a tech
| worker who doesn't have to even think about budgeting for books.
| Telling them no has never been a practical consideration here.
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| Koshkin wrote:
| Since years back I already can't help but keep thinking of paper
| books as nothing but printouts of text files. (And I no longer
| want or need printouts.)
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| bodantogat wrote:
| To add to the woes of the publishing industry, a lot of sales are
| lost due to piracy. $300MM a year for the US alone (per a 2019
| article).
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/07/28/us-publish...
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