The flattening of e-book sales

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by meeera

*squints*

*reads again*

*completely fails to make sense of why F/SF, romance, and crime are suited to ebook format, while litfic isn't*

Because people read a LOT of the former and a LITTLE of the latter. I bet.

I myself find litfic slower going than a good romance or sf novel.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by meeera

*completely fails to make sense of why F/SF, romance, and crime are suited to ebook format, while litfic isn't*

A long time ago I saw a review that suggested that eReaders would be popular for people who read in public but don't want people to know what they are reading. I have a few F/SF books I hesitated taking out of the house because of the covers. Of course, the covers had no relation to anything that was in the books

As to "litfic", I suspect that a fair portion of readers of litfic would fit in the "I love the smell and feel of paper" crowd.

[Lemurion]

I'm sorry, that reads like someone attempting to defend elitism rather than any sort of reasoned argument. Any sort of narrative prose can be read equally easily in print or digital, the only time it makes a difference is when you're dealing with complicated layouts that aren't suitable for reflowable formats.

Anything focusing on genre rather than layout and format is just an excuse for people to look down their nose at others.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I'm sorry, that reads like someone attempting to defend elitism rather than any sort of reasoned argument. Any sort of narrative prose can be read equally easily in print or digital, the only time it makes a difference is when you're dealing with complicated layouts that aren't suitable for reflowable formats.

Well, maybe not if you have to go back and re-read stuff. I think this might be easier to do in a paper book. I read _Gravity's Rainbow_ as a Kindle book but I now think that a paper book might have been better because then I would have gone back more to re-read and check up stuff.

[doctorow]

The Slate's take:

Why Don't People Want to Read E-books on Tablets?

It comes down to a well-known phenomenon: procrastination.

[usuallee]

Perhaps also, people are finally cottoning onto the fact that even though the amazon site says "Buy now with 1-click"", that is misleading since for DRM'd ebooks you are not actually buying an ebook at all, but actually leasing or renting it in a narrowly defined way where you can't actually do what you want with the ebook you just bought.

Hopefully publishers will do what the music industry finally did, allow their wares to be widely sold DRM-free. Or, also like the music industry is doing now, give away the ebook with the purchase of the physical book, it's so obvious, a lot of us have been saying that for years, and only a few small specialty publishers have actually done it.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, maybe not if you have to go back and re-read stuff. I think this might be easier to do in a paper book. I read _Gravity's Rainbow_ as a Kindle book but I now think that a paper book might have been better because then I would have gone back more to re-read and check up stuff.

I don't find it much different to go back with an ebook but mileage may vary. Then again I haven't even cracked Gravity's Rainbow since I was about 15 and that was a long time ago.

Generally, though, I find anyone writing dismissively of any genre (particularly with an undercurrent that they don't read it) is at the very least acting elitist, even if they don't think so.

Sure, books range widely in quality, but genre is a terrible measuring stick.

[Istvan diVega]

So true. To dismiss literary fiction en mass in the way some people do, is at least as dimwitted as carrying around some much-lauded book in a vain attempt to impress.

[Joykins]

romance (just one genre) far outsells any other genre, including litfic. No aspersion, just facts. Why would ebooks be significantly different?

[speakingtohe]

I don't find litfic any harder to read, and enjoy it more often than not.

I read mostly genre books though, Mystery, fantasy etc. Not because they are easier, but I am kind of a junky for series books. I get very attached to the characters themselves, or to the authors style. Been that way since I was a child before I even knew what a series was

Helen

[Grace Elliot]

Interesting. If sales have plateaued and yet there are more authors out there, that would suggest the market share for each author is smaller. Hmmm....food for thought.

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I read mostly genre books though, Mystery, fantasy etc. Not because they are easier, but I am kind of a junky for series books. I get very attached to the characters themselves, or to the authors style. Been that way since I was a child before I even knew what a series was

I've never really given that any thought but there's definitely some comfort in picking up a book by an author you like, writing about characters you know. And it doesn't matter what format the book is in.

[danskmacabre]

Originally Posted by Fbone

People discovered free ebooks.

I agree, this.

Before I had an ereader I bought about 1 pbook a month and borrowed library books on top of that.
Reading is my main leisure activity.

Now I mostly get books from Gutenberg and other legal free sources.
I'm currently reading through all the H.P. Lovecraft books and loving it.

On top of that, the whole Amazon 1984 book deletion scared me off buying ebooks with DRM, especially from Amazon.

Not that I haven't bought ebooks with DRM, but very rarely and I always strip the DRM as well, so it doesn't mysteriously disappear.

When/if I can routinely buy DRM free ebooks that legally belong to me, I expect my spending habits with books will return to pre ebook levels.
Until then, Gutenberg and other sites like that are my friends.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Grace Elliot

If sales have plateaued and yet there are more authors out there, that would suggest the market share for each author is smaller.

Well, I guess that if the number of authors rises, as it has in most recent years, average market share has to decline, just as a matter of arithmetic.

US print + eBooks sales, taken together, supposedly rose six percent last year. If I understand my last link, that's a six percent raise in retail prices paid. I'm not sure how that maps to average authorial income.

My wild guess is that many authors are keeping their incomes from falling only by releasing books more often.

Regardless of average market share, or traditional publisher vs. indie, or paper vs. eBooks, being an author remains a terribly difficult way to make a living. Maybe this March 2013 link appeared on Mobileread before, but I can't find it:

My Amazon Bestseller Made Me Nothing

The New Yorker wrote one whole, entire, punctuated-and-everything sentence about me! My book was the No. 6 bestselling title in America for a while, right behind all the different “50 Shades of Grey” and “Gone Girl.” It was selling more copies than “Hunger Games” and “Bossypants.” So, I can sort of see why people thought I was going to start wearing monogrammed silk pajamas and smoking a pipe. . . .

This is what it’s like, financially, to have the indie book publicity story of the year and be near the top of the bestseller list.

Drum roll.

$12,000.

Hi-hat crash.

[Bittybye]

ebooks will always have the market corned for the heavy reader, the people who read 3-10 books a week. Unless you live in a huge mansion with more than one room devoted as libraries it's not feasible to own that many paper books.

I live in a small apartment and had to buy paper books sparingly just to keep my shelves somewhat organized. Now I can buy as many books as I want whenever I want.