Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
B&M availability of midlist and backlist titles has declined dramatically and continues to. decline daily.
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I guess everyone is aware of the long tail in ebook publishing but reading your post made me think about it in a somewhat different way. I've always seen that as an advantages for publishers and for readers but maybe it ain't so. Maybe when ebooks become "the thing" and paper books are a minor format and that makes old books more readily available to more people, readers will have less interest in the latest book and there'll be fewer blockbusters.
I'm sure the blockbusters will never go away but they're so heavily depended on by publishers any significant decline in them could be pretty harmful to the bigger publishers.
Personally I like older books and I love the idea of the long tail. Anyone remember Pat Frank's book "The Age of the Tail" where everyone after a certain date was born with a tail? That made it really hard to hide your age when you were older than that and it made for a big market for artificial tails.
Wait! Was that a digression?
Barry