The book industry is going through some major changes, influenced by trends like the transition from print to digital, growing popularity of Pring On Demand, etc.
We follow the discussions on the future of publishing very closely, and we would like to share with you some of the most interesting articles, posts, updates and news we find on this issue. We hope you will find these resources useful!
People have been talking about "the death of the book" for more than a decade. But recent events suggest the end may be imminent for bound-paper books as we have known them for more than 500 years. Hardbound and paperback books may never totally disappear, but they could become scary scarce - like eight-track tapes, typewriters and wooden tennis rackets.
The printed book will not “die” in our lifetimes: there are too many of them already around for that. And I don't even think the ebook will be “the dominant commercial form” (Negroponte's position) in as short a time as five years. But it almost surely will in ten and I'd say that in no more than twenty the person choosing to read a printed book will not be unheard of or unknown, but will definitely qualify as “eccentric.”
The physical book is dead, according to Negroponte. He said he realizes that's going to be hard for a lot of people to accept. But you just have to think about film and music. In the 1980s, the writing was on the wall that physical film was going to die, even though companies like Kodak were in denial. He then asked people to think about their youth with music. It was all physical then. Now everything has changed.
Instead of wishfully hoping that e-books will remain a niche product, publishers now have to realize that e-books are officially a game changer. If an increasing percentage of readers choose to read electronically, it's foolish to thwart e-book sales (which are more profitable due to cost efficiencies) with tactics such as delaying the digital release for months after the hardcover is in stores.
Steinberger: future of publishing, overriding trend is that it lowers the barriers to connecting consumers with book content. Next big challenge is how to turn this technology into sale. From an independent product standpoint the changes coming are very beneficial. At early stages of book pricing. Building a set of analytics to test pricing and responses. Trend is that people are willing to pay for digital content. Good that not locked into some “arbitrary low cost” for ebooks. In 5 years 25% ebooks.
Among the leaders of the book publishing industry gathered recently for the Book Industry Study Group’s (BISG) annual Making Information Pay Conference, there was general agreement that the book industry’s supply chain is broken when applied to electronic books.
Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea... And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you've got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.
Is Print Dead? - J.A. Konrath, Huffington Post, May 21, 2010
Moderator: Welcome to Obsolete Anonymous! I've gathered you all here to welcome our latest member, the Print Industry.
Print Industry: Hello, everyone. But there's been a mistake. I don't belong here.
Books are not going anywhere. Neither is publishing. Since Gutenberg made his epic contribution to the human race, publishing has secured a place as one of the largest and most profitable industries in history. In that time, publishing has adapted to major technological changes, survived economic meltdowns, persisted through political censorship, and made it to the other side of catastrophic price wars.
Green branding and marketing experts Joel Makower, John Grant, Jacqueline Ottman, Peter Korchnak and Orly Zeewy answer the question: Can book publishers build an effective green brand?
OK, obviously the book industry has its carbon footprint (12.4 million metric tons - 2006 figures) and it would be better for planet earth if this footprint will be reduced, but what else? and even more important - can going green help the industry meet its current and future challenges?? Tough questions, but we're here to figure them out!
Using a memorable and somewhat ominous phrase, Oxford University's Evan Schnittman said the book publishing world is facing a “new world order,” or a trio of giant companies—Amazon, Google and Apple—making plans that will forever change the way we find, buy and read books. Schnittman's comments were made at “The Book on Google: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud,” a panel discussion held as part of Publishers Weekly's Think Future discussion series.
At the opening session of the Wharton School 's Future of Publishing conference, held April 30 at the Marriott Marquis in New York , Atria's Judith Curr offered an interesting observation. Despite all the talk in recent years about the “demise of publishing,” Curr said, “everyone wants to get into it.”
The [book] industry's great hope was that the iPad would bring electronic books to the masses—and help make them profitable. E-books are booming. Although they account for only an estimated three to five per cent of the market, their sales increased a hundred and seventy-seven per cent in 2009, and it was projected that they would eventually account for between twenty-five and fifty per cent of all books sold. But publishers were concerned that lower prices would decimate their profits.
Thanks to everyone who came to Intersection: Publishing yesterday. Our fascinating round-table discussion was cut off far too soon: I think we could have gone on for days and only barely covered the issues. It's clear that an open conversation that treated publishers, authors, readers, technologists and lawyers as equals was long overdue. (Missed it? Watch this space.)
There's been a lot of talk about how the iPad is the future of publishing and that's probably true. People point to the various newspaper and magazine apps for the iPad as examples of where the industry is heading. To be sure, a lot of those apps are very strong and I'll be reviewing them here in coming days but to see what publishing is really going to looking like in two years you're going to need some help from Woody and Buzz.
The monthly release of ebook sales figures by the IDPF provides a regular reminder about how fast this market is growing and it always provokes me to project the curve into the future and think about the implications. It was an IDPF data release that triggered the thought that we needed a “Tipping Points” panel at Digital Book World last January which turned out to be one of the highest-rated presentations by the attendees of the conference.
If you care about the future of books, you need to understand the Google Book Settlement. It's a complicated legal document, but we've talked to some of its architects, detractors, and defenders - and break it all down for you. The Google Book Settlement could easily be the twenty-first century's most important shift in how we deal with copyright in the world of publishing.
Like many other parts of the media industry, publishing is being radically reshaped by the growth of the internet. Online retailers are already among the biggest distributors of books. Now e-books threaten to undermine sales of the old-fashioned kind. In response, publishers are trying to shore up their conventional business while preparing for a future in which e-books will represent a much bigger chunk of sales.
With the number of books published each year climbing, traditional distribution channels shrinking and the specter of free digital content looming, the future of the blockbuster is uncertain. Surviving and thriving might well depend less on reaching a wide audience and more on doing really, really well serving your niche. Does the book business need to go vertical to survive?
Kevin Smokler of BookTour.com moderated a very prepared panel of publishing experts: Pablo Defendini from Tor and Tor.com, Debbie Stier from HarperStudio, Matthew Cavner from the book-and-video company Vook, and Kassia Krozser from Booksquare... Smokler kept the discussion focused on concrete examples of progress within the industry and future opportunities that are closer than the audience might realize.
In digitization, Epstein sees both a blessing and a curse. It will be possible for anyone to become a publisher, “and only the ultimate filter—the human inability to read what is unreadable—will remain to winnow what is worth keeping". Publishers will have “imprints” in this digital world, the way they have brand names in bookstores today.
Over the next few years, expect the publishing business to crowd even closer around that 37 percent sales channel. In the process, the six big firms will become four or fewer. That's the development that "publishers are anxiously eyeing on the horizon."
Amazon delivered today a beta version of its free Kindle for BlackBerry e-book app, a quick download that provides access to more than 420,000 books. It marks just the latest example of how the publishing industry is facing seminal changes. Will the end result be the death of quality content?
Veteran literary agent, e-book publisher and industry blogger, Richard Curtis is not known for keeping mum on what is going right or what is wrong in the book publishing. That is why we were grateful to ask him what he foresees as happening to the book publishing industry in the next 10 Years.
It was a year in which publishers continued to spend exorbitant amounts of money on print advertising, in spite of data showing how ineffective such advertising tends to be, but also a year in which some publishers discovered the power of online media to reach niche markets at significantly lower costs. What does this mean for the future? That for every trend there will be a counter trend. And since this is the time of year for Top Ten lists, here's mine:
The Future for Publishing - MIT World, Panel moderator: Geoffrey Long, with Gavin Grant,
Jennifer Jackson,
Robert Miller and
Bob Stein, April 25, 2009
