Quote:
Originally Posted by MattW
Fair enough. But in the music industry, sales of physical media are actually declining year by year. So there is no question that the digital market is having a real effect -- and while digital downloads are growing, you're right that in order to assess the market as a whole we have to take into account streaming services like Spotify.
But there are crucial differences, namely that (a) paper book sales are not trending downwards in a similar manner (in the UK, for example, print is up, see https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-uk-book-sales) and (b) the structure of the publishing industry means that a lot of well-known authors are not on KU or other subscription services (whereas the artist who's not on Apple Music or Spotify is the rare exception).
The fact that print sales are increasing is in itself a very good indication that digital is not having a hugely detrimental effect on sales at the moment. You can make the argument (as it seems to me that you do below) that new sales channels have created a new market that wasn't there before, so that the market as a whole has actually increased. But that's fine, of course none of the Big 5 would want to compete with a $1.29 self-published indie if their sales are holding steady. Why would they?
Maybe if we go by sheer quantity of ebooks sold, the situation is a little different. Let's leave aside the not unimportant fact that print sales are doing very fine indeed, so we can't really say that they're "losing".
But what kind of metric is the one you're proposing? Isn't that comparing apples & oranges? Let's say that for the sake of the argument I grant you that the ebook market is slightly more than 50% indie & self-published (according to the Author Earnings website), that still leaves more than 40% for the Big 5 plus small/medium publishers.
And while the conventional wisdom here is that the Big 5 are all dinosaurs who don't know what they're doing, it seems to me that they have a point in the sense that as long as their market is strong (and it is), their need to lower prices is questionable at best.
I agree that the world of indie and self-publishing has enriched the book market. The fact that anyone can sell a book world-wide is a wonderful development.
I disagree on the effect that is actually having on the traditional (paper) book market. After an initial surge, ebook sales seem to have plateaud when it comes to traditional sales. Maybe we can sort of meet in the middle and agree that a new market has been created that is not served by the traditional publishing houses and is doing exceptionally well?
Matt |
Uh...
The Big 5 print market isn't strong.
It is stagnant at best, going back to the last century and in steady slow decline at worst.
This past August was the worst in 20 years for bookstores precisely because of BPH front list weakness.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellendu.../#366e88b1a6e7
Last year they had the same problem but the establishment tried blaming it on the election.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...04e5-304500337
No such excuse this year.
Look closely at the "good" reports, like this one:
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/s...quarter-667946
...And you'll see an operation barely treading water obscuring their decline by buying smaller fading publisher's to add to the reported sales and not factoring in inflation into their numbers. Factor both in and that "Good" S&S report becomes a year to year decline, the latest in a series.
You are aware that the BPHs are phasing out the MMPB format, right? They are replacing sales of $8-9 mass market releases with $13-15 trade paperback releases, selling less books in the process. Which is something that started back around the turn of the century, long before ebooks became mainstream. This smokescreen, generated by reporting sales in unadjusted currency terms rather than unit sales is just one of the tricks they use to hide the decline of print.
So yes, print is in decline and has been for decades. Long before ebooks.
Traditional publishing has been in consolidation mode since the 1980's with less publisher's selling less books to ever larger populations. Tradpubbed authors have seen their income decline just as long in the UK, US, and Canada.
It is a sick industry.
Are the BPHs dying?
No. They are too big and control too much UP to die out any time soon.
But they are losing market share, market power, and significance much faster than the smaller tradpub and the Indies.
They are far from bellweathers anymore. And that is mostly because of their reactionary war on ebooks. Try comparing their unit market share today to their position in 2010 before the conspiracy. Repeat the exercise for small and medium publishers. You'll find that the gains made by Indie Publishers have come exclusively at the expense of the BPHs while smaller publishers have held steady or even grown slightly.
The ongoing disruption in publishing isn't a matter of e-book vs print or Indies vs tradpub. It is BPHs vs everybody else.
And the BPHs are losing. Losing sales, losing manuscripts, losing authirs, losing power.
Which is a thoroughly good thing.