E-Books or Physical Books? Do We Get the Same Reading Experience? (they do coexist, you know?)

King: A book is 'an object with a nice cover.
You can swat flies with it.'

One of the interesting things I’ve discovered since blogging about things digital and print Re their interfacing in the changing publishing industry: the belief that they are mutually exclusive and are at odds with each other.

And this belief is held NOT ONLY by non-professionals that were just raised in a certain era and refuse to change --- BUT, ALSO by some supposedly educated, publishing professionals (that were just raised in a certain era and refuse to change).

I’ve received comments from literary agents, editors, booksellers, distributors and various publishers that consistently and aggressively argue, or try to argue, that print has not been changed but a wee bit due to digital tech and that it will always be as dominant as in the past!

Of course, you have to consider the source for these comments coming from pipe dreams of ones who have lost positions/money or are deathly afraid of its coming inevitability (unless they adapt,  change and grow).  

Let’s get a couple of things straight --- print IS still the dominate format in publishing and, I suspect, will be for the near future --- But, print’s dominance is being gobbled up at a light speed rate considering digital and e-books nanosecond existence compared to print’s 573 year existence (German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press process in 1440).

Also, the print (traditional) publishing industry is, and has been for some time, shrinking down and adjusting through mergers and acquisitions, staff/structural and contract changes to tighten up, fit in and be more competitive in the new changing publishing environment --- where digital and print will be more sharing dance partners rather than adversaries.

Now for an outlook by famous author Stephen King in an interview with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:

Why E-Books Aren't Scary

Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories. His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars." In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."

Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an "early adopter." Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

More recently, Mr. King's novella "Ur" was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In the interview below, Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing:

The Wall Street Journal: Do we get the same reading experience with e-books?

Stephen King: I don't know. I think it changes the reading experience, that it's a little more ephemeral. And it's tougher if you misplace a character. But I downloaded one 700-page book onto my Kindle that I was using for research. It didn't have an index, but I was able to search by key words. And that's something no physical book can do.

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Ebook Growth Down in 2012 - What Does It Mean for Publishing? - Inside the Numbers

Do you know what the hell
is going on with ebooks?

The Association of American Publishers (AAP), who has been tracking ebooks since 2002, reported the dip in 2012 ebook growth. Growth in 2012 fell to 41% --- You don’t say? Well damn, whoopee do, what’s the big deal?

The big deal is ebook growth for the past three years has been in the triple digits!

Now, a 41% growth in any other industry would be astronomical--- but, not in ebooks with three years of sustained triple digit jumps. So, what does this mean for the publishing industry as a whole?

An interesting question with some even more interesting forecasts and analytical numbers --- which tonight’s post will get into with this insight from Jeremy Greenfield reported in Forbes:

Ebook Growth Slows in 2012 to ‘Only’ 41%; What Does It Mean for the Publishing Industry?

According to the latest numbers from the Association of American Publishers,revenue for ebooks for some of the biggest categories grew by 41% in 2012. Ebooks now account for 23% of trade publishing revenues.

In any other industry for any other business, this would be eye-popping growth. For the world of ebooks, it represents a significant slowdown from years past.

The AAP has been tracking ebooks since 2002. That year, ebooks represented 0.05% of all trade publishing revenues. To get to the current 23% number, the biggest gains were made in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the years immediately following the 2007 launch of the Kindle. In 2008, ebooks were 1% of publisher revenue. In 2011, they were 17%. Those were the years of triple-digit growth numbers, a trend publishers thought would continue until ebooks were at 50% of revenue or more.

But in 2012, according to these new numbers, growth in ebooks has hit an inflection point in the U.S. Of course, that’s on a larger base. Adult fiction and nonfiction, children’s and young adult and religious ebooks raked in more than $1.5 billion in revenue last year. That number is sure to increase in 2013, but by how much?

The growth rate of ebooks between 2011 and 2010 was a bit over 100%. If the growth rate in 2013 is similarly cut down to size as it was in 2012, my guess is that it will be in the 18% to 20% range*. If that happens, we’ll be looking at a $1.8 billion industry next year.

Regardless of how much ebooks grow this year, the fact is they probably will grow, but slower than last year. So, what does that mean for the publishing industry?

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The Book Industry Is Not Only Surviving - But Surviving Well

Simply Two Book Formats

"For all the complexities that publishing faces, the notion that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or information ecosystem of our time doesn't hold up to the evidence."  Peter Osnos


I wrote a post Saving The Publishing Industry? two weeks ago. Today's post is another take and expansion on the health/condition of the book publishing industry --- with some neat insights many of us might not have previously considered.

This from The Atlantic by Peter Osnos:

Numbers show that the publishing industry is handling the rise of e-readers better than what folk knowledge might suggest.

The fall publishing season is in full swing. There can hardly have been a year with more luminaries atop both the fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists; J. K. Rowling, Michael Chabon, Ken Follett, Junot Diaz, among others, represent literary acclaim and commercial appeal. Diaz (This Is How You Lose Her) is having an especially good run: He is both a National Book Award finalist and a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" prize. Stephen Colbert, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Young, Bob Woodward, and Salman Rushdie are just a sampling of the nonfiction bestsellers. (For the full array, check out the New York Times's copious five pages of print and e-book listings in the book review , which are supplemented online with "expanded rankings" featuring "more titles, more rankings and a full explanation of our methodology.") Whatever else may be happening in this tumultuous period of transition in how books are produced and distributed, the sheer range and quality of so many titles is indisputable proof that our marketplace has writers and readers in impressive numbers.


For all the complexities that publishing faces, the notion that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or information ecosystem of our time doesn't hold up to the evidence.

Recently, Colin Robinson, a respected founder of a New York-based independent publisher, OR Books, wrote an essay for The Guardian entitled "Ten Ways to Save the Publishing Industry." The summary paragraph was grim: "Book sales are stagnating, profit margins are being squeezed by higher discounts and falling prices and the distribution of book buyers is being ever more polarized between record-shattering bestsellers and an ocean of titles with tiny readerships." For the most part, Robinson's recommendations are common sense: an emphasis on selection, pricing, effective use of the Internet, and a focus on readers by devoting more effort to reaching them directly through social media. Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director of Digital Book World, in a response to Robinson's manifesto makes a strong case with observations that I generally share: "The publishing industry isn't a monolithic thing: some publishers are doing well and others are not. ... I don't see an industry that's flailing—I see one that's managing a complicated transition much better than would be expected."

The available numbers seem to support this view. In the first six months of 2012, according to Publishers Weekly, drawing on data from 1,186 companies, the Association of American Publishers reported that trade sales increased 13.1 percent, to $2.33 billion. The most important indicator is the continuing boost in e-book sales, up 34.4 percent, to $621.3 million, which makes it competitive with the totals for hardcover print sales. When you consider that it was only with the appearance of Amazon's first Kindle reader in 2007 that e-book sales took off, the pace of change is stunning. I still own an original Kindle, and picked up an iPad when it was released (these early models serve my simple purposes), but there are so many more advanced versions of these readers that consumers now have choices galore that are far more extensive, for example, than are provided by televisions, which most people judge simply by the size of their screens or the quality of the picture.

For those of us who remember a relatively genteel era, as recently as the 1980s and early 1990s, when books were shipped for sale mainly to classy "carriage trade" independents, several national chains (that have since gone under), and the enduring but embattled Barnes & Noble enterprises, there is a frenetic feeling about the push for visibility in the digital age.

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Total 2011 Book Sales = $27.2 Billion -- A Breakdown of All the Numbers

Book sales for 2011
all the numbers

Interesting numbers for the four major segments measured by BookStats: k–12, higher education, professional/scholarly and  trade (trade includes fiction & nonfiction).

Which categories are up, down or flat? The reasons why, etc., etc.

How did digital and print books fare? How did one affect the other?

Jim Milliot of Publishers Weekly provides these analytics:

Industry Sales Pegged At $27.2 Billion

With print declines offsetting digital gains, total sales slipped in 2011




Total book sales fell 2.5% in 2011, to $27.2 billion, according to the latest figures released by BookStats. Revenue was down in three of the four major segments measured by BookStats—k–12, higher education, and professional/scholarly—and up slightly in trade.
Within the trade category, the juvenile fiction segment had the strongest performance in 2011, with sales up 11.9%, to $2.78 billion. The increase was led by a huge jump in e-book sales, which rose 378.3%, to $220.3 million, and a solid performance in the hardcover format, where sales rose 14.8%, to $1.29 billion. Sales in juvenile nonfiction fell 2.1% in the year as a 223.9% increase in e-book sales was offset by a 3.3% drop in trade paperback sales. Still, the combination of fiction and nonfiction sales made the juvenile category the fastest-growing segment last year with total sales up 9.4%, to $3.30 billion.

Total adult sales fell 2.6% in the year, to $9.21 billion. Sales of fiction declined the most, off 6.1% in the year, to $4.29 billion, while nonfiction sales dipped 0.6%, to $4.92 billion. Although sales of fiction e-books soared in 2011 to just under $1.3 billion, sales in the print segments declined, with mass market paperbacks and hardcovers particularly hard hit, with sales off 31.8% and 23.1%, respectively. The decline in fiction was due to higher sales of lower-priced e-books, as well as a drop in units, which fell 6.5% in the year. The less severe decline in nonfiction sales was due in part to a drop of less than 1% in units, and while e-book sales rose 136.4%, to $468.2 million, the declines in the major print formats were much smaller compared to fiction: hardcover sales fell 5.9%, and trade paperback sales were off 3.8%.

The religion segment, which BookStats classifies as trade, had a good 2011, with total sales up 7.3%, to $1.45 billion. The segment benefited from a 136% increase in e-book sales as well as a 14.5% increase in hardcover sales. Unit sales in the segment jumped 37%, helped by the huge success of Heaven Is for Real.

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American Book Industry Growing Overseas (Print & Digital)

American Books Export Growth

TV shows and Hollywood blockbusters have always been good American cultural exports --- But, guess what? American books have joined the "great American cultural exports" group.

The Association of American Publishers, tracking book exports for the first time, have found some interesting facts about why non-English speaking countries are now seeking American English titles.

And, AAP offers some good statistical growth figures over the past couple of years.

More details by Matthew Flamm, in Crain's New York Business:

New York books find foreign audience

Sales of American-published authors rose 7% in 2011 thanks to a 333% spike in e-book sales, report says. Young readers overseas want to learn English.

TV shows and Hollywood blockbusters aren't America's only cultural exports. The book industry is also expanding overseas, according to a report released Friday by the Association of American Publishers that looks at book exports for the first time.

Exports by U.S. publishers, which are dominated by the big six New York houses, rose 7% in 2011 over the prior year to $357 million. That included $22 million in e-books purchased overseas—a 333% spike—and $336 million in print books, a bump of 2%.

Continental Europe made up the biggest market, with sales of $83 million, up 15%. The United Kingdom was second, with $64 million in sales, up 23%, followed by Latin America, which was up 15% to $17 million.

The report attributed the growth to the spread of online booksellers and the international emergence of e-books in 2009. Historically, foreign distributors, particularly in non-English language countries, offered only 5% to 10% of U.S. publishers' English-language titles.

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E-books Sales Up - Print Books Maintaining

Another view that puts print books in proper perspective...They are still a strong force.

Bob Hoover , of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, writes this intuitive piece that points out some figures that are sometimes ignored or forgotten:

Amazon, the online retailer, has been selling its Kindle digital book reader for nearly three years now, one of a handful of these electronic devices, including the recent Apple iPad that combines a bunch of "applications" that the other digital readers lack.

Despite the makers' suggestions that the device will make the old-fashioned print book extinct, it seems clear, for some time to come, at least, that these "appliances" are alternatives to books, not replacements.

My two-week experience with a Kindle last year convinced me that it's fine for reading straightforward narrative fiction and nonfiction while traveling, but it's a cold, impersonal experience for a "dinosaur" like myself, not raised on computer screens.

And, it's the screen itself that limits the eyes from roaming around unlike a standard book with its two-page view, as though you are inhabiting the story rather than getting it in restricted chunks.

No matter. E-book readers are selling well. Apple said last week it had sold 3.27 million iPads since April. Amazon said Kindle sales have tripled. Sony chimed in as well, claiming to have scored 10 million book sales at its online download store.

What boosted those sales was price cuts. Barnes & Noble sells a Nook model for $149; Amazon dropped the Kindle from $259 to $189 recently.

Amazon raised the level of its aggressive marketing strategy last week when it announced that e-book sales have surpassed print book totals on its website.

"Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books," the company said.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, called the event "the tipping point" for digital books, meaning his company's digital-book department and its Kindle.

Perhaps we should place that claim into perspective.

As Michael Cader of the trade observer Publishers Lunch pointed out, sales of print books last year were 205 million, a number that must reduce digital book numbers to insignificance at this point -- if we had those figures, but Amazon won't provide specific numbers, either for book or Kindle sales.

Read more http://alturl.com/dsbfw