Haven't seen this article posted here, but found that it raised some interesting points:
Due to the Forbes terms of conditions, I'll only headlight the key points, rest you have to read in the link below:
Quote:
...The publishing world gathers next week in Manhattan at BookExpo America, its annual trade show, but the one subject attendees won’t be discussing is the coming collapse of publishing and the inevitable disappearance of books.
It’s not just that books are going to Kindles and iPads. It’s that books are going away, and the publishers have no one but themselves to blame...
...The traditional New York publishing business model — publish a ton of books, fail to market most of them, and hope that somebody buys something — worked well when publishers had a hammerlock on the distribution and marketing of books. Publishers essentially faced no competition and enjoyed complete control of what books people could publish and sell.
In today’s world, however, anyone ...can put up a book online with Smashwords, Lulu, or Kindle Direct, and bypass publishers — and bookstores — all together...
...But the real reason why books are going to vanish is the remarkably un-business-like business model of the publishers..
..In no other industry do producers actually wait passively to see what products are suggested to them, instead of doing market research to see what people really want to buy. Yet publishers seldom generate book ideas; instead they wait for literary agents to submit proposals. Houses decide which book to publish based on little more than a gut feeling that says, “I think we can make money selling this!”...
..Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them...
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http://blogs.forbes.com/booked/2011/...gered-species/