Here's a view of the publishing world from 15 years ago:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Me..._busters.html\
Quote:
In 1985, before the chain-store expansion began in earnest, the United States led all nations in book title production. From 1986 to 1990, publishers' revenues grew at a 12.1 percent compound annual rate. Shipments of adult trade books-the key book category for bookstores- advanced by 14.6 percent. Publishers' pre-tax operating income grew at a rate of 10 percent, operating cash flow at 13.3 percent, and assets at 9.4 percent.
In the early 1990s, however, Barnes & Noble and Borders embarked upon a major superstore expansion. From 1991 to 1993, the amount of square footage in the United States devoted to the retail sale of books doubled. The major U.S. publishers went all-out in support of this chain-store expansion, giving the chains special terms and lavish promotion (leading to independent bookstore charges of antitrust violations and ongoing litigation). The major publishers cranked up their print runs and title production to meet the business expansion that they all believed would accompany this chain-store growth.
That market expansion never occurred. By 1995, publishers' growth rate was down to 2.1 percent, the lowest growth in 10 years. The increase in outgoing book shipments to the chains simply resulted in an unprecedented level of books returned to the publishers. People in the book industry still talk about the day-perhaps apocryphal, but it has the ring of truth-when more than 60 Barnes & Noble 18-wheelers pulled up to the Random House warehouse loaded with books to be returned.
Within a few years, the market had become saturated and could not nearly fulfill the promise of the superstores' selling capacity. Publishers saw margins fall sharply in 1996, dropping to five-year lows. Operating income margin and operating cash-flow margin each decreased 2.5 percentage points. Compared with 1992, 1996 operating income and operating cash flow margins declined 4.7 percent and 4.4 percent-this in an industry already famous for slim margins. From 1994 to 1997, trade book unit shipments decreased at a 2.1 percent annual rate. By 1997, the sluggish growth of 1995 and 1996 deteriorated to an actual market contraction, as sales of consumer books fell 2.7 percent. Over 1995 and 1996, net shipments of adult trade books dropped 10 percent. Perhaps the most astonishing part of this contraction is that it occurred during an economic expansion.
The ill effects were not limited just to sickly financial reports. By the time the chain-store madness had taken its toll in 1995 and 1996, the United States had dropped from first to fourth in the number of books produced each year.
Worse, perhaps, than the decline in the number of titles published was a dramatic shift in sales among the books that were published. The book business has begun shifting even more heavily towards celebrity-driven bestsellers. The number of bestsellers (books that sold 100,000 or more copies) grew substantially in the 1990s. When that fact is juxtaposed against an the overall decline in book sales, it is clear that mid-list books are falling off the edge. Good fiction, investigative reporting and other quality books are simply being squeezed out of the market.
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Sounds awfully familiar, no?
The sky has been falling for a very long time.