E-book Sales Are Exploding And Hurting Paperbacks, Publishers Say

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Printed books cut into the sales of hand-written books, too. And codices really munged up the sales of scrolls. Technology happens.

I bet the monks were not impressed either.....

[crich70]

That would depend on if they could even read or write I would imagine. Not every monk back then would have been able to. And of course the black death made scribes more scarce as well so printing would have been the only viable way to go at that point I would think.

Originally Posted by sabredog

I bet the monks were not impressed either.....

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by CazMar

...with so many people saying it was going to happen (and don't forget sites like Teleread have been around for years talking about the advent of ebooks etc etc), why do the book publishers now seem surprised by all of this?

They aren't.

Using the term "cannibalization" does NOT indicate that they were caught off guard. It just means that they believe that ebooks are cutting into their paperback sales -- as opposed to, for example, taking away sales from movie rentals or video games.

Consider some other statements made by the CEO in question in the keynote:

"The signs are that consumers expect e-books to be priced considerably lower than physical books. There's no easier way to drive an e-book up the charts than by massive price reductions."

"For publishers to remain relevant, we need to influence the choices which authors, technology companies, and consumers will make. It’s therefore essential to understand what motivates them. It’s essential to engage with them. You only have to look at the music industry, to see the price of failing to engage with technology and the consumer, early enough."

Full text is here: http://futurebook.net/content/it-end...-new-beginning


Now, I won't say that everyone here will wholly agree with Ms Barnsley. But it is screamingly obvious from the actual text of the keynote that she is not blindsided or surprised by the changes in the book business that are already underway.

[ficbot]

I agree that ebook sales are going to change the way publishers do business, but I think it is a mistake to bank your whole premise on the idea that all of these ebook customers would have bought the paper book otherwise. We have seen enough anecdotal stories from people on this forum to indicate that this is not always true. They will lose *some* sales. They will gain other sales from former library and used book store users who never bought from them in the first place.

I forget the name for it, but there a word for those logic statements that don't really follow. You know, like 'candy is pink, girls like candy, therefore girls like pink.' The whole 'ebook sales are rising, paper sales are falling, therefore if we stop the ebook sales, all those people will buy the paper instead' argument strikes me as being on that level.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I agree that ebook sales are going to change the way publishers do business, but I think it is a mistake to bank your whole premise on the idea that all of these ebook customers would have bought the paper book otherwise. We have seen enough anecdotal stories from people on this forum to indicate that this is not always true. They will lose *some* sales. They will gain other sales from former library and used book store users who never bought from them in the first place.

That would be and is me.

When we were solely buying paperbacks, the choice was limited and particularly, I, had to be also selective with purchases. Our bookcases could only hold so many books and that space was approaching critical.

I purchased close to 75% of my paperback purchases at book exchanges anyway, remainder online. My wife was not picky, as long as she could get the book she wanted to read.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

They aren't.

Using the term "cannibalization" does NOT indicate that they were caught off guard. It just means that they believe that ebooks are cutting into their paperback sales -- as opposed to, for example, taking away sales from movie rentals or video games.

Reminds me of Steve Jobs' reply when asked if the iPhone was reducing iPod sales. "If anybody cannibalizes Apple's sales it should be us". That is the smart way to look at it. For the publishers it should just be a shift to a new medium, but they must manage it carefully.

[Richey79]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I forget the name for it, but there a word for those logic statements that don't really follow. You know, like 'candy is pink, girls like candy, therefore girls like pink.'

You can call it a flawed syllogism, although I'm convinced there's a snappier single-word term for it (I may well be mistakenly thinking of sollecism).

A nice example can be taken from Yes, Prime Minister. Known as the Politicians' Syllogism, it goes something like this:

We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.


On another note, I really hate the size and shape of 'trade' paperback format. If I've only got a book in print format, and it's 'Penguin classic' size, I'll very happily read it. The abominations that are 50% bigger and invariably have neon-covers that look like a box of washing powder, not so much. The advantages of ebooks over these vile objects are even more self-evident.

[rogue_librarian]

I think you're looking for "fallacy".

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by leebase

10 years out -- yes, it is possible that mmpb's will have gone the way of the dodo.

I'm not sure that it is going to take 10 years.

The paperback fiction market this year is down seven percent in trade value - I put this almost entirely down to ebook sales ... the mass-market paperback is the thing we’re going to cannibalise most.

They are saying that they are the ones that are going to do the cannibalizing, and that quote doesn't have an "if" or "when" in sight.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by leebase

It likely doesn't matter one bit to the publisher whether ebooks are taking sales away from mmpb. Money is money, after all.

Lee

I would have thought this would be very good news for publishers. There is a lot more profit in an ebook than there is in a realbook, and there will be a lot fewer readers with each individual ebook sold than there is with a realbook because of DRM restrictions. Even moreso when everything moves towards a cloud-based (hate that expression) sales model where "purchases" are stored on the publisher's servers rather than on the "buyer's" own devices.

[rogue_librarian]

Is it really? In the short term, perhaps, but how will new generations of readers be introduced to new authors and genres if garage sales and used-bookstore bargain basement deals disappear, too? I know I have found more than one author that way whose books I continue to buy. And I know I'm not the only one. Sure, there are always libraries, but still...

[drewwa]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Printed books cut into the sales of hand-written books, too. And codices really munged up the sales of scrolls. Technology happens.

What he said.

Cheers,

Drew.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Is it really? In the short term, perhaps, but how will new generations of readers be introduced to new authors and genres if garage sales and used-bookstore bargain basement deals disappear, too? .

= = = =

[drewwa]

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Cheers,

Drew.

[DMB]

Originally Posted by Richey79

You can call it a flawed syllogism, although I'm convinced there's a snappier single-word term for it (I may well be mistakenly thinking of sollecism).

A nice example can be taken from Yes, Prime Minister. Known as the Politicians' Syllogism, it goes something like this:

We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.


On another note, I really hate the size and shape of 'trade' paperback format. If I've only got a book in print format, and it's 'Penguin classic' size, I'll very happily read it. The abominations that are 50% bigger and invariably have neon-covers that look like a box of washing powder, not so much. The advantages of ebooks over these vile objects are even more self-evident.

The candy is pink example is what is called an undistributed middle. The Yes Minister example is a different kind of fallacy because it relies on different meanings of the same word, "something".