Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
The fundamental problem the industry is facing is not a new one. It's been going on for years, and ebooks didn't cause it. There are simply too many books chasing too few readers
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One thing about ebooks that gets overlooked in the usual "cannibalizing sales" discussions is that while you see a lot of people who say they read about the same amount after getting an ebook reader, and a fair number saying they read more (some of them, like me, significantly more) since getting an ebook reader, you don't see many saying their reading has dropped off a cliff since they got that ebook reader.
Granted some of these people are sticking to public domain books, but out of all the people who got/will get new Kindle 3s this year, what is the percentage--the average user percentage, not the average hardcore Mobile Read user percentage--who are reading free books
only? And then to use myself as an example again, I might have bought a book a month in the past, but in the past month I've bought nearly 20, all from non-indie (and mostly all from non-agency) publishers, and probably another 15 the month before that. (Nearly all of them came from Kobo with discount coupons. I love bookstore coupons.) I probably won't average 20 books a month every month, but a book or two a week--easily five to eight paid-for books a month--could conceivably be my new norm.
Even if, on average, everyone who gets an ebook reader only increases their reading by one book a year, that's just doubled a certain (and growing) percentage of the book market. The more attractive and convenient publishers (and reader manufacturers, reading app designers/programmers and social reading site creators) make ereading, the more books are going to be sold, over and above what would have been sold in an alternate, nearly identical universe where ebooks never happened to have been invented.
But first publishers have to stop acting like ebooks are the poor relations they wish hadn't shown up uninvited to the family dinner.