Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
I think the real issue is that young people simply aren't reading many books any more.
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There's also cheap video streaming (a month of Netflix is cheaper than a single corporate ebook) and "free" ad-supported streaming services, games and game subscriptions (a month of XBOX GAME PASS is $10), as well as tons of readily available public domain and fan fiction for those that do read.
Population has grown significantly but the traditional publishing world hasn't.
In reality it has shrunk significantly and was shrinking before ebooks: the business has been consolidating since the 80's so where once there were hundreds of publishers from NYC and Boston alone we are down to dozens, with the 5 biggest hiding their decline by buying the smaller ones regularly.
What ebooks have done is bring in thousands upon thousands of books to market, both old and new. That is resulting in a Darwinian dilution of sales. this is reflected in the increasingly lower numbers need to reach the so-called bestseller lists and the ever shorter stays on them.
The total number of readers is growing but not as fast as the number of good books out there. Even in the smaller genres it is physically impossible for anybody to read all the great books released in a single year, which used to be doable into the 70's for SF.
The revolution did come, it's all around us.
It just didn't take the form pundits expected.
And that is just ebooks.
There is a somewhat older parallel revolution in *used* pbook sales onlne.
Whole 'nother ness for tradpubs.