Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Technology is moving forward whether publishers like it or not. They'll have to downsize and learn to live with smaller profits. If they can't adapt, then they'll perish.
|
It seems to me that the publishers were quick to start issuing new titles as eBooks. They also were quick to let them be sold at the same time as hardcover editions -- with the eBooks commonly sold at paperback prices. That, to me, refutes the technophobe meme.
Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 is an example of technology moving forward. Who is it who likes, and dislikes, that? When posters here decry DRM technology, lately I'm seeing the caveat that it's fine for library borrowers like you and me. At least the big publishers aren't saying that affluent book collectors can get their books DRM-free while we hoi pollio get treated otherwise.
As for smaller profits, well, a little less might be good, but publishing profits don't have all that much room to decline. For example, Hachette had that quite comfortable 14 percent profit margin last year, but in each the four previous years, they either barely broke even, or lost money.
The only benefit to me of there being these big publishers is that their advances support creation of heavily researched non-fiction. If downsizing means that advances against non-fiction book proposals are going to decline much more, that would negate the value of those publishers.
It could be inevitable that publishers who support complex long-term book projects will perish the same way that newspaper foreign bureaus and investigative teams have. I hope that's not the downsizing you support.
Genre readers may think big publishers are problematic when the genre books appear to be subsidizing the rest of the operation. I do see non-fiction eBooks that are three times longer than a genre fiction or off-the-cuff advice title, and took ten times longer to write, priced at just thirty percent more. Maybe genre can't keep on subsidizing war reportage and biography like that forever. But so long as there is any kind of business case for it, please keep trying.