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Originally Posted by jgaiser
And yet magazines are still around and in some areas thriving.
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But, that's simply not true. The breadth of magazines available even 10 years ago dwarfs what is for sale, and where, today. Go back a decade earlier and the situation is starker still.
Life, Saturday Evening Post, Look, TV Guide have all been mainstream casualties ... and you can add
Newsweek to that shortly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
Markets *are* going to change, but predicting the death of books after many centuries of use is a bit premature.
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This mantra of "death of books" is entirely rhetorical. The much quoted Amazon stat that paid e-books outsold hardcovers sold by Amazon in 2010 came with the footnote that hardcover sales were also up during the period. It's hard to die while the market is growing.
The distribution channels are changing, and the way people consume books is changing with the consequence that the economics of getting books from author to reader are changing too. By the time Amazon announces its pback sales have been surpassed by paid e-book sales, the writing will be on the wall -- and that, according to Amazon, could be 2012.
Will you still be able to buy some new pbacks for the foreseeable future? Of course: they are still making vinyl records 26 years after the introduction of CDs. But 78s? Not so much. And vinyl distribution is a tiny, niche industry that could not possibly support the music industry. That same dynamic will creep onto the resume of pbacks, probably within this decade.