Exclusivity made the film business easy for a relative handful of people in the 1920’s, thirties, and forties. All aspects of production, distribution, and even film display tended to be owned and controlled by the same company, with only a handful of companies competing against each other. And then the business evolved into something very different: less simple, less profitable, and of lower quality. Television intervened in the late forties and the fifties, complicating the situation considerably. Film companies, in the late 1940’s began to sell off control of key theaters in critically important urban centers. The business declined until reinventing itself in the mid to late-1960’s and then entered a period of unprecedented profits and success in the 1980’s and beyond.
Within the context of the book business, traditional publishing is already entering a similar change of life, descending into confusion, lower quality and desperate efforts aimed toward publishing only authors and works that seem easy to promote. So we end up with endless self-improvement books, niche marketing works such as romances, mysteries, and other popcorn for the mind; books by celebrities, such as one on poetry by Suzanne Somers and so many other great contributions to world literature. Once in a while, someone like Jonathan Franzen comes along, gains attention and much-deserved respect within the industry. But, all to often, new writers go ignored and left aside, for the simple reason that the prospect of bringing along new authors presents too great a financial risk. Publishing houses have become too big and too focused on the idea that there really is not such an animal as the intelligent reading public.
Meanwhile, enter the villain: self-publishing. The print-on-demand industry is in its infancy, where books are printed from one day to the next as each order is placed. No need for inventory, by anyone anywhere. But then where does that leave traditional booksellers you ask? With a problem. Electronic readers are only beginning to be bought and appreciated by the reading public. And yet now Amazon.com says that more than half of the “books” that it sells are in e-formatted books downloaded electronically for its Kindle users. Barnes and Noble has its own similar product; Borders as well; and now Sony is trying to establish itself solidly in that market.
Once products such as the Amazon Kindle hit price points well below $100 per unit, the market is going to explode, and that is likely to happen sooner rather than later. Electronically-formatted book downloads could surpass hard-copy book sales within a decade or less. Considering the public’s appetite for electronic technology, and the speed at which the public has accepted new products and ideas in recent years, it is reasonable to assume that e-books will basically replace most hard-copy books within considerably less than a decade.
Those of us who dearly love the look, the feel, the whole reading experience of a truly well-written hard-copy book may feel uncomfortable, to say the least, with the idea of electronic readers becoming the primary medium for the sharing of literature. But the trend is unmistakable. Financial benefits to the consumer are enormous. A hard-copy book can cost $40. A quality trade paperback of the same work can cost $15 or so. Exactly the same text can be downloaded onto an electronic reader for less than ten bucks. Royalties for authors are outrageously higher on electronic books, paying as high as seventy-percent royalty per download. Meanwhile, royalties have been steadily falling on books produced by the traditional publishing industry in recent years, and that trend is accelerating rapidly.
Publishing houses had best learn how to reinvent themselves quickly if they hope to survive. Authors have huge incentives to self-publish. Readers can save tremendous amounts by downloading e-books rather than spending on hard-copy texts. And retail booksellers should watch what has happened to Blockbuster as its core business model became completely irrelevant while it refused to, or simply failed to, adjust. Literature, and the writers who produce it, are not going to disappear,,,ever. Traditional publishing might.
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