I've been around for a while. Long enough to recall B&W TV was it. unless you wanted to spring 25 cents for a Saturday matinee at the moving picture show. There was no color and there were only 3 stations, if you were lucky. TVs cost quite a bit too, but when the companies found competition and a lower price point they sold LOTS more TVs to LOTS more folks and made LOTS more money.
Music came on big disks made of black plastic called records or for free on the radio.
Then color TVs came. Big advance. Things looked kinda like they did in real life. Color broadcasting was scarce and so were the TVs since they did cost so much. Once the price of color TVs came down to a point where the public (customer) was willing to pay they sold like hot cakes.
Then came along video cassette players and recorders. You could actually rent a movie and take it home to watch with your own pop corn and drinks.
Soon you could go to multiple stores and get a movie not for $5 each a day but for $3 for 2 days.
The theaters cried alligator tears but they still show movies and even have discount theaters that show them for less than $10 a ticket. They seem to make money even at $3 a ticket. You don't mind your shoes sticking to the floor so much at $3 either.
Music? Oh now it's in cassettes. Lord a mercy! now you can even copy your original cassettes or records onto your own cassettes. The music industry didn't seem to fade away though and "stars" still make obscene amounts of money for their craft as well as the music industry.
Videos changed to CDs. So did music. Then there were CD recorders so you could copy your music or video again. The industries seemed to survive and adapt.
Now we have 2 different formats for DVDs. Anyone remember beta?
Music can be downloaded. No record, tape, CD or DVD needed. Heck you can download movies now. The industry seems to adapt and move on.
Even photographs have changed. Glass plates no longer exist. Neither does Kodachrome but there are tons of folks taking wonderful pictures, including professional photographers who don't take on "airs" about "art", without even so much as film, developer, fixer or a dark room. Not nearly as smelly and you don't have to go modify a room to keep out light either.
Things change. Successful companies change with it, or like the Edsel, fade away. Either you please the market or you can fade away along with the claims about "art" that don't matter because you didn't remember that the only thing that does matter is pleasing the customer. If you do not provide what the customer wants, at the price the customer is willing to pay you certainly do not matter.
If a small niche is all you want, make your product exclusive, but don't forget that exclusive things change or they go away just like beta video equipment did.
Books are not a necessity in a stalled or bad economy. Publishers need to understand that entertainment is the first thing cut when budgets get tight. If they don't make things economical and price accordingly they can't make a living if no one is buying. You can't charge rent that is equivalent to buying it outright and expect customers to be happy about it. Unhappy customers find ways around that situation, think napster.
