In the wake of Black Wednesday–where book publishers conducted massive firings and hiring freezes–both the New York Times and Salon.com have written a few persepectives on the demise of the traditional book industry.
Jason Boog of Salon.com is calling it “the end of days” for the book industry and questions if and how it will survive.
Thanks to conglomeration and corporate distribution models, some of publishing’s biggest houses were laid very low by the current stock market collapse. And scary holiday book sales figures compounded the industry’s woes, with recent news of a 20 percent drop in sales in October from last year’s book market. Even worse, Nielsen Book Scan reported a 6.6 percent drop in unit sales during early December. Not even the holiday season could bolster book sales.
Boog notes that many of the big booksellers refused to look at the market and new distribution models–failing to integrate the rise of online electronic media as well as resting on big selling books, rather than mid-level books that allow smaller publishing houses to be more nimble and creative. “As the corporate monoliths limp into 2009, a number of smaller, more independent houses could thrive during this recession. A few of those presses have structured themselves to avoid long-standing problems that got big publishing into this mess: high advances, long author lists and spiraling costs,” Boog writes.
In yesterday’s NY Times, David Streifeld details his own culpability in the industry’s fast fall–noting that the search for cheap books and the rise of online reselling cuts the author, the publisher and the book store out of the profits.
In other words, it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them. This is not about Amazon peddling new books at discounted prices, which has been a factor in the book business for a decade, but about the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they’re lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.
They get their books from friends, yard sales, recycling centers, their own shelves. castoffs (I just bought a book from a guy whose online handle was Clif Is Emptying His Closet). Some list them for as little as a penny, although most aim for at least a buck. This growing market is achieving an aggregate mass that is starting to prove problematic for publishers, new bookstores and secondhand bookstores.
Yes–the death knell is ringing for the traditional media industry. And it’s going to be bumpy and scary. It’s going to damage a lot of individuals who are losing their jobs in the interim. But for the broader future–this is an opportunity to really understand how to repackage, redistribute, and rethink the kind of long form information and storytelling that makes up books. I’m not an expert on the book industry, but I can imagine if it’s anything similar to the magazine industry–rethinking how to print and distribute to reach audiences beyond the traditional means is a must. They will need to think about how to be competitive with the Streifeld’s of the world or fulfill a need that these amateurs can’t (maybe offer exclusive audio/video commentary from the author or help organizing online and offline conversation groups about the book).
From Kindle to accessing a book on your IPhone there are innovative new ways to distribute long-form information to the world and to potentially reach new audiences. (Maybe release an electronic chapter a day!)
I’d love to hear from the small innovative presses that are thinking about what the industry might look like 5 to 10 years from now–and what they are doing to be on the cutting edge of that change.
All I know is that while this might be the end of days for the traditional book industry, it is not the end of days for books. I’m on a working vacation in the Outer Banks right now. And in between blogging, writing, planning and phone calls–I’m staring longingly at the huge stack of fiction and non-fiction books I lugged along on the plane with me (I can’t help adding 20 pounds to my luggage.) And I just can’t wait to curl up with each one, dive into the first sentence and emerge with a sigh on the last. And then open another book.
I have picked out three key points and their implications from this excellent post, 
Columbia Journalism Review 
