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pwalker8 · 11-09-2017, 07:44 AM

There is a whole lot of wishful thinking and projection going on in this thread.

The publishing industry is going through the same thing that the music industry did 10 years ago and we are seeing the exact same predictions that we saw back them. Those predictions, none of which came true, are about as likely to be accurate this time around. There was a lot of "at last those evil record companies are going to get what's coming to them".

In the music industry, we saw the market splinter quite a bit. The old record companies still exist and still make money, but there are many more options available to musicians. Some artists started up their own record label, something that had be an option for the big names, but finally became an option for the smaller artists as equipment costs went down and distribution options opened up. Before touring was a way of getting your latest record noticed, now artists make significant money touring Other bands make money on YouTube, via web pages, via streaming music, all sorts of ways. It's a very different landscape, but artists still make money and many of the same players are still around.

That's the process that the publishing industry is starting to go through. It's not real surprising that book sales in stores are down, because people are buying books online, are buying ebooks and the audiobook industry is booming. I'll buy both an ebook and an audiobook, but I suspect that I'm very much in the minority for that.

As technology and laws change, I expect that we will see the market fracture even more. The big name publishers will still be around, but I suspect there will be a lot of smaller publishers out there. Print on Demand is more and more affordable and better quality. We see more and more authors experiment with self publishing and different types of media. Authors are figuring out a lot of different ways to make money, and for the most part, it's all very hard to measure. We see the same issue in political polling. Polls are frequently wildly inaccurate because many of the assumptions baked into the polls are no longer accurate. People who estimate books sales have the same issue. Many of the assumptions that are baked into their models aren't particularly accurate.

11-09-2017, 07:44 AM	#159
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	There is a whole lot of wishful thinking and projection going on in this thread. The publishing industry is going through the same thing that the music industry did 10 years ago and we are seeing the exact same predictions that we saw back them. Those predictions, none of which came true, are about as likely to be accurate this time around. There was a lot of "at last those evil record companies are going to get what's coming to them". In the music industry, we saw the market splinter quite a bit. The old record companies still exist and still make money, but there are many more options available to musicians. Some artists started up their own record label, something that had be an option for the big names, but finally became an option for the smaller artists as equipment costs went down and distribution options opened up. Before touring was a way of getting your latest record noticed, now artists make significant money touring Other bands make money on YouTube, via web pages, via streaming music, all sorts of ways. It's a very different landscape, but artists still make money and many of the same players are still around. That's the process that the publishing industry is starting to go through. It's not real surprising that book sales in stores are down, because people are buying books online, are buying ebooks and the audiobook industry is booming. I'll buy both an ebook and an audiobook, but I suspect that I'm very much in the minority for that. As technology and laws change, I expect that we will see the market fracture even more. The big name publishers will still be around, but I suspect there will be a lot of smaller publishers out there. Print on Demand is more and more affordable and better quality. We see more and more authors experiment with self publishing and different types of media. Authors are figuring out a lot of different ways to make money, and for the most part, it's all very hard to measure. We see the same issue in political polling. Polls are frequently wildly inaccurate because many of the assumptions baked into the polls are no longer accurate. People who estimate books sales have the same issue. Many of the assumptions that are baked into their models aren't particularly accurate.