Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
I think he is right about the long-term. I look at the change in my own book-buying habits and do not see good things for the publishing world, i.e., both authors and publishers.
Until I received my first ereading device (Sony 505) 4 years ago, I spent $5,000 and more each year on books, nearly all hardcovers.
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This past year, my first year with my upgrade to a Sony 950 and the giving of my 505 to my wife, hardcover purchases have declined dramatically. I spent about $1,500 on hardcovers and I visited the local bookstore on average once a month.
But an even steeper decline occurred in ebooks. In 2011, I spent less than $200 buying ebooks, yet I increased my ebook library by more than 650 ebooks.
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On the flip side: It's very likely that before I got my ebook reader, I hadn't spent $5000 on new books in my entire life. I've never liked hardcovers for leisure reading (too heavy; rather carry two paperbacks with me). I looked for secondhand books and borrowed books, except for RPG manuals which are a lot harder to find used.
Since I got my ereader, I buy a few dozen dollars every month of new ebooks. That's not a whole lot--but it's up from effectively zero that I used to spend on novels that payed royalties.
Not entirely zero... I'd buy the new Terry Pratchett in paperback, sometimes the new Mercedes Lackey, and so on. And for nonfic, the occasional religious book, and I haven't stopped buying RPG manuals. But for novels, my annual new book budget was under $20; it's now over $200.
There's a lot more readers like me--people who either read seconhand, or weren't avid readers at all, who'd be happy to throw a few dollars a week at literary entertainment; some, on less strict budgets, will happily spend double what I would. But publishers aren't reaching out to us--we've never been on their radar, so they have no idea how to advertise to us. They don't know what we value in books or how that shifts to ebooks, because we were never their direct customers.
Publishers and authors who've figured out what I'm willing to buy are getting money from me that wasn't on the table at all ten years ago. *That's* what the agency publishers are missing--they're under the assumption that they know who "the book-buying public" is, and what they want & will put up with, instead of realizing that new media = new audience; they could have a flood of customers who've never cared about paper books.