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.

Read and learn more

The WWB (Writers Welcome Blog) is available on Kindle :)))

Saving The Publishing Industry?

"Reports of my death
are greatly exaggerated"

READ ALL ABOUT IT! READ ALL ABOUT IT! Publishing has died. At least according to many people who are closer to dying themselves :)

The publishing industry is NOT dead NOR is it dying --- It has just been reborn (or being reborn), so to speak.

Now, some people may say the new publishing babe is a bastard or born with handicaps --- but, I say: with love, understanding and therapy the newborn will shake out just fine.

My opinion of course. What's yours?

Colin Robinson, a founder of the New York-based independent publisher OR Books, has his own ideas RE how to save the publishing industry:

Ten ways to save the publishing industry

With book publishing in crisis, Colin Robinson calls for a reformation

This year, on the face of things, it's been business as usual at the Frankfurt book fair, with some 7,500 exhibitors setting up shop in the gleaming white Messe. But scratch beneath the surface and a tangible unease about the future of the industry is evident: book sales are stagnating, profit margins are being squeezed by higher discounts and falling prices, and the distribution of book buyers is ever more polarised between record-shattering bestsellers and an ocean of titles with tiny readerships. The mid-list, where the unknown writer or new idea can spring to prominence, is progressively being hollowed out. This is bad news not just for publishing but for the culture at large.

It's time for a reformation in publishing, and the precepts set out below provide a basis for the creation of a new, healthier book industry. They echo another event that occurred during October in Germany, nearly half a millennium ago: the nailing of Martin Luther's 95 theses to the doors of Wittenberg cathedral. Luther was protesting against the idea that the route to salvation could be secured by payments to those at the top of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The theses here should have been pinned to the Amazon stand at Frankfurt.

1. Publish for readers, not authors. The 21st-century publishing environment has tipped the balance still further towards the importance of the reader. The garrote that Amazon has applied, using its market share to obtain ever higher discounts from publishers that, in turn, allow price cuts that secure still more customers, is possible because of the behemoth's direct relationship to readers. To break this stranglehold, publishers must start selling direct. The longer-term advantages of using their own customer databases to sell at full price, rerouting the additional revenue into marketing, will outweigh any initial discomfort about eschewing the services of the world's largest booksellers.

2. Publish more selectively. In a recent open letter to Amazon customers touting Kindle Direct Publishing (through which authors sell their books directly to readers), founder Jeff Bezos claimed that the programme produced "a more diverse book culture" with "no expert gatekeepers saying, 'Sorry but that will never work.'" Bezos evidently regards the function of publisher as obsolete. Publishers will flourish when they are seen as discriminating arbiters of their customers' tastes. Limiting the number of books published will assist in emphasising this vital role of gate-keeper. Publishing successive books by the same author, or books grouped tightly by type or subject, will underscore the publisher's authority as a curator.

3. Focus on editing and design. The new publishing dispenses with a variety of traditional functions: investing in print runs, warehousing, catalogues, chasing payments and processing returns. But other tasks such as editing and design take on additional importance. Ensuring that books are readable and attractive is a vital way for publishers to stay afloat in an ocean of self-published titles.

4. Hold no stock. Print-on-demand remains significantly more expensive than conventional printing. But it means the end of misjudgments about how many books to print. Further savings will be achieved by foregoing warehouse costs and not tying up capital in stock. And, of course, in this new, more efficient system, the environment benefits alongside the publisher's bottom line.

5. Publish fast. For books dealing with current affairs or breaking cultural trends, to say nothing of the publisher's cash flow, the advantages of direct-to-reader digital publishing's faster turnarounds are enormous.

Read and learn more

The Writers Welcome Blog is available on Kindle :)))

     

Dissecting the Publishing Industry - A Revealing Autopsy

Dissecting publishing
old and new

The old, so-called literary gatekeepers have fallen on the trail of progression (or is that the 'trail of tears'?); book critics or reviewers have morphed into thousands of social networking bloggers; agent, editor and marketing duties have been taken over by the necessarily more entrepreneurial writer --- and, guess what?

The writer has, indeed, become the publisher!

Hell, the newbie writer did most of the publishers' work under the old TP system of publishing anyway. It's just a whole lot easier today thanks to technology.

This publishing industry upheaval has created many new self-publishing support services niches --- and, oddly enough, has not been totally negative to the traditional publishing industry.

Warren Adler, published author (War of the Roses), gives this intriguing insight in the HuffPost:

Decoding the Self-Published Author

Every author knows that producing a book requires an extreme act of concentration, discipline, organization and stamina. It is an achievement requiring enormous effort, time and isolation rarely matched by other forms of artistic creation.

Despite all the revolutionary changes that roil the publishing industry and are currently upending the old methods of presenting books to the public, the bedrock fact remains that a published book, whether presented on paper or on screen, still carries with it a measure of prestige and achievement.

Despite the difficulties involved in a book's creation, there is no shortage of people determined to produce works that reflect their own vision, whether they are motivated by chasing the false gods of fame and fortune or simply satisfying their overwhelming need to be heard and their views, talents and interests projected beyond the confines of their own minds and imagination. There are perhaps millions of people worldwide currently bent over their desks composing works they hope to share with others.

A few short years ago, the pipeline for these endeavors was strictly regulated by time-honored methods of filtering. A band of business-minded publishers, fed by a gaggle of first look agents, would submit choices to publishing houses whose editors and marketers filtered out their own choices. These choices were then cataloged seasonally, and an army of salespeople was dispatched to book buyers of independent and chain stores who subsequently made their own choices based upon past sales, and perhaps a few gut choices of their own.

The road to marketing and publicity channels was well rutted. Mass media outlets had their own filtering process to determine which books they would feature in their review columns, and advertising sections of books were well established. A few well-respected critics could be relied upon to filter their own choices to public scrutiny.

Media outlets hit upon the idea to record book sales as a kind of horse race of popularity, which helped them with their advertising, and kept the sales pot boiling for those authors lucky enough to be included.

Roughly, this is the way the system worked for many decades. Publishers supported their prolific authors with advances based on projected sales and future royalties, and those books that didn't sell went back to the publishers in an arcane system of consignment.

For those authors who didn't make the filtering cut, the only solution was "vanity" publishing, which meant that an author could pay to have his book published, and for the most part, try to get his book into the system. A camel through the eye of the needle is a good analogy. While there is no real statistic on author rejections by agents and publishers, the real figure based on the amount of self-published books being shoe-horned into the current offerings on e-readers indicates that those numbers must have been staggering.

That publishing system has been completely overturned by time, taste and most of all, technology. The industry itself has been sliced and diced into categories and sub-categories and sub, sub categories. In fiction, hundreds of genres and sub-genres have been created and built around categories to appeal to specific tastes; categories such as romance, mystery, fantasy, zombies, vampires, graphic novels, erotic, young adults, children, etc. with new categories emerging like ever thin slices of salami.

In non-fiction, the slicing and dicing has reached epic proportions in areas such as politics, religion, popular culture, race, memoirs, exposés, diatribes, self-help, pop psychology, nutrition, diet, health, and sex -- especially sex. On that latter subject the recent Fifty Shades of Grey category has jumped the fiction and non-fiction categories by building a kind of story around a 'how to' guide to sado-masochism performance.

Read and learn more

Get Writers Welcome Blog on your Kindle :)))












    

How About Some Final Stats for 2011 Publishing

Print or Digital, books are still books

My last post was on some publishing trends for 2012.

Let's now take a look into some final analytical numbers for 2011 publishing ... What the hell is the state of the union RE publishing, anyway?

The following is a cross post from my Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog:

Did the Book Industry Take it on the Chin in 2011? Inside Some Numbers


It’s really hard to tell by the analytical parameters that the old book industry trackers (such as Nielsen BookScan) has set up to take the measurements. BookScan doesn’t even track e-books yet! What the hell are they waiting for? You have to get e-book numbers through other sources such as the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Let me say now that books are books … regardless of the media they are presented in. And they should be included in any analysis of the overall health of the book publishing industry.

But, this bit of industry analytical dabbling in the following article from Crain’s New York Business by Matthew Flamm does provide an interesting insight:

No happy ending for book industry

Book sales in 2011 dropped 9% overall, with mass market paperbacks seeing the biggest declines. Adult hardcovers—the industry’s biggest moneymaker—saw a 10% drop.

The book industry took it on the chin in 2011, though e-book sales continue to offer the promise of better times to come.

Through Dec. 25, total unit sales of physical books fell 9% to 640.6 million, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 75% of the market. That compares to a drop of 4% in 2010, and 3% in 2009.

Some categories were hit particularly hard. Sales of mass market paperbacks, a category that has been hurting for years, fell 23% to 82.2 million copies. More troubling, perhaps, was the 10% drop, to 164.1 million units, in the adult hardcover category, which is the industry’s biggest moneymaker. Trade paperbacks proved the most resilient of the major formats, with a 6% sales decline, to 351 million copies.

Among subject groups, adult fiction suffered the most, with an 18% plunge to sales of 160.3 million copies. Commercial fiction tends to sell particularly well as e-books. Adult non-fiction was down 10%, to 263 million copies.

(John’s Note: By the way, how many know the definitions of (or differences between) the following categories: adult fiction, commercial fiction, mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, adult hardcover?)

Read and learn more


Get Writers Welcome Blog on your Kindle :)))

"Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated!"...The Written Word

I have been discussing in numerous previous posts the new technologies causing the current upheaval in the publishing industry and it's old business model. Along with this comes the natural question of the fate of the written word on good old paper.

Here is an insightful article by Kelly Piercy on the wondrous written word:

"I am blind. I manage. I have a plethora of technologies to assist me in my daily interaction with the world. My computer recognizes text and reads to me. I get books on tape free from the Library of Congress through my local library. I can download books from the net. I can have others read to me at stores and restaurants. I have portable digital readers that read me human recorded books and books read by a rather flat mechanical voice. I have a portable bar code reader that scans labels and tells me what the item is. New technologies are developing that will allow me to use a cell phone to take a picture of a sign or menu, etc. and tell me what it says.

What has the greatest cost of losing my sight been? The simple act of sitting down with a book and losing myself in it."...Read more at http://alturl.com/tncy

John Austin Answers

Alas! (I like that word) the publishing industry is simply being upgraded so it can use the new tools that will get written, printed words (they are still written & printed, whether on paper or on disc or in any digital format! Just like these words in the computer email) out to the masses faster and in greater quantity.

When the dust settles, the publishing industry should be better off! After all, the old codgers in the publishing houses were ripping the creative artists off...giving the authors a measly 15% of profits (should have been 50-60%) and a bunch of BS about all their supposed overhead etc & blah blah! The playing field is just being leveled.

Sorry about your virus & fender-bender. I assume all is ok?

John Austin Replys to Mark Morford:

Good luck with "Daring Spectacle." You hit the nail on the head with the current upheaval in the publishing industry; AND self-pub is gaining huge and immediate credibility due to technology and the fact that the old publishing industry got to the point where they asked author's to do their work for them! Old Publishing SOLD OUT...only pushing and marketing books by celebrities for the main part (most written by ghost writers!). Good writing and artistry be damned! Not to mention the skimpy split they would give author's (the friggin creators, mind you, that allowed them to make $$ in the first damn place!).

You're right, self-pub and keep 96% of your profits!

On Publishing: John Austin Answers Jeanne Scott

Publishing a first book has never been easy is correct. Only points out the fact that the old publishing industry has never been properly manned to handle the talent workload. It's just been an arbitrary decision by an agent or publisher...usually generated by uncontrollables such as his mood, hangovers...an eye catching lead-in that might catch his/her eye today but not tomorrow, etc,etc, ad infinitum. AND they say if you don't dot an "i" or cross a stupid "t" OR your margins aren't a certain friggin width...the idiots won't even read the content that might be ingenious or wildly entertaining! These types need another job or a resetting of their priorities.

It's nauseous and always been a stacked industry, deeply bent in favor of publishers and exploitive of the talent that made them the damn money in the first place!

AND THEN they want you (the author) to do the hard work for them by marketing your own book to make them the money...Who needs them? What good do they do in today's atmosphere? The 30-40% split they allow you is a rip off! Should be the other way around and for what the publishers do they should be happy to get 30-40%...in fact, that's probably too high!

In truth, publishing has never been an efficient industry and they probably deserve to die as they are now and just go away. Self-publish or get a "newer-age" publisher (that I feel has to emerge to fill the gap) that will allow the intellectual property creator to pocket the more rightful 60-70% of the earnings. Let's get the dog wagging the tail again instead of the other way around...

On Publishing: Jeanne Scott Said:

You've certainly been covering the waterfront in researching all the different aspects of getting a first book published, John. Truth be told, I don't believe it has ever been easy to achieve this feat; but we are in a different and definitely discouraging period. (As I wrote those words I visualized something like the sinking of the Titanic and everybody in a raging, swirling ocean trying desperately to stay afloat economically.) Self publishing is no easy task either, but it is an avenue others have succeeded in accomplishing and may at this time be the sole route for writers like us. I'm cheering for you!!

Information Overload on Writing, Agents and Publishing!

Welcome to my blog! My name is John R. Austin and I'm a writer. I am starting this blog because of the info overload "out there" relating to writing, getting literary agents and the state of the publishing industry in general!

Check these stats from an article by Walt Shiel. Are they true or not?

The “Hard Truths” About Book PublishingArticle by Walt Shiel

Let’s consider some of the “hard truths” about the publishing industry.If you’re at all serious about publishing, whether self-publishing or not, you really need to be aware of some basic statistics about the industry. They aren’t pretty and may tend to be discouraging. But would you rather jump into these treacherous waters with a head full of platitudes and myths… or with a clear-eyed view of how things really are?I think you are far better off understanding what’s really going on and what you, as an author and would-be self-publisher, are really up against.

So, without further belaboring the point, here goes.Book publishing in the U.S. has exploded over the past few years. Here are the number of new English-language titles published per year in the U.S., as reported by R. R. Bowker (the keeper of U.S. ISBNs and publisher of Books-in-Print):

195,000 titles in 2004
295,000 in 2006 (a 51% increase in two years)
411,000 in 2007 (a 39% increase in only one year)

In 2004, there were just under one million books in print (new and backlist). Last year, there were almost three million in print. Offset printing (the traditional method using the large roll- or sheet-fed printing equipment that is cost-effective for larger print runs only) accounted for only about 1% of the 411,000 new titles printed in 2007; the rest were printed using digital printing technology (print-on-demand) that is only cost-effective for short print runs.Why do you suppose the number of new titles more than doubled in three years? Can you spell subsidy publishing (in the guise of the plethora of self-proclaimed “self-publishing companies”)? Three decades ago, there were only 357 publishers with books listed in Books-in-Print. Today, there are only six major (New York) publishers, maybe 400 mid-size publishers, and almost 100,000 small publishers (which includes the large number of self-publishers). More than 10,000 new (mostly small) publishers go into business each year. Of course, many of those small publishers fail every year, too, but that’s common in most businesses (lots of new start-ups quickly fail).The six major New York publishers are Random House, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Hachette (formerly Time Warner Books), and Simon & Schuster. Of those, only Simon & Schuster is still American-owned. Ever wonder why more and more foreign authors are being published by major “American” publishers? Now that you know how many new titles are published and how many publishers are publishing them, you might wonder how many are being sold? That is a far more difficult question to answer reliably, since publishers are notorious for overstating actual book sales. However, we can turn again to Bowker for some statistics:

93% of all titles sell less than 1,000 copies
Overall average sales for all titles is about 500 copies
7% of titles account for 87% of sales (mostly from the big NY publishers)

So, where are those books actually sold? If you guessed mostly in bookstores, guess again. Here’s the breakdown (the ranges are because it depends on what source you rely on):

Chain bookstores account for 25-33%
Independent bookstores (including used book stores) account for 3-10%Online book retailers account for 21% (almost all Amazon.com)

That means 36-52% of all book sales come from non-bookstore outlets. What’s a non-bookstore outlet? Gift shops, grocery stores, drug stores, “big box” stores (Wal-Mart, Costco, etc.), book clubs, back-of-the-room sales, direct-to-consumer sales, and on and on. The opportunities are limited only by your imagination and marketing efforts.You can choose to self-publish and compete in the bookstores for that 28-43% of the total market, which means you’re competing against Random House, Simon & Schuster et al who can afford to buy those end-cap and front window display locations. Or you can choose to compete primarily in the online and non-bookstore markets that represent the remaining.The choice is yours and should be driven by your detailed marketing plan for your book. You do have a detailed marketing plan, right? Trying to sell books without a marketing plan is like taking a long trip into unknown territory without a map — you might reach your destination but the odds are against you.If you don’t really know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Or when you’re way off course?
7:44:00 PM
by John Austin
1 – 1 of 1