

The death of the printed book is closer than you think - ananthrk
http://arvindn.livejournal.com/120810.html

======
patio11
I'm an odd duck when it comes to reading habits, but the Kindle I got two
months ago pretty much revolutionized mine. Previously I read about 5 novels a
month and bought roughly 60% of them through Amazon. Since buying my Kindle I
have bought 22 novels, 20 of them on the Kindle.

(And if they had trashy Japanese sci-fi available I would have gotten the
other two on it, too.)

I've also bought a LOT more books from new authors than I usually would have,
since a) it doesn't threaten to waste my trip to the bookstore and b) "First
book in the series is free" is freaking genius and should be written into the
standard contract for all sci-fi and fantasy authors (who live and die on
selling the same people 1+ copies of every book of each series they are
following).

While we're at it, can we drag authors/publishers kicking and screaming into
Internet marketing? I'll give you my email address in return for a free book.
I've spent probably close to $1,000 on Terry Pratchett books and yet I'm left
to my own devices to discover that a new one just got published. What the
heck. I should be getting my semi-annual update from Terry in the inbox
complete with a sample chapter and his affiliate link to Amazon. (Hint hint
publishers: cross-promotional opportunities abound.)

------
cstross
_Let's say an author were to self-publish digitally with Amazon, and thus
forgo all non-Kindle sales, but maintain the same volume of Kindle sales as
they would get with a publisher._

$PUNDIT is making the classic mistake of confusing publishing with
bookselling.

Amazon isn't a publisher, they're a bookstore -- a bookstore with infinite
(virtual) shelf-space. They're in the business of renting shelf-space to
merchants.

Publishers, contrary to first impressions, are not printers of books. (None of
my publishers -- Ace, Orbit, Tor: companies you may have heard of -- own
printing presses: they outsourced that side of the business decades ago.)
Publishers are in the business of acquiring IP, getting it polished up to
publication standard, and feeding it into a supply chain. Booksellers (such as
Amazon) are just the final step on the chain before the final consumers (who
feed the beast with money). And what it takes to make a profit in this
business is a combination of (a) taking raw product and turning it into a
package, and (b) knowing how to market it effectively.

The assumption implicit in this article is that if you want to self-publish
and focus on Amazon's customer base, you can get the same results as if you go
through a mainstream publisher who is also servicing the bricks'n'mortar
stores. But the marketing push that goes into selling books through
bricks'n'mortar _also_ goes into raising your visibility above the parapet
among Amazon's clientelle. News about which books are good spreads largely
through word of mouth and review columns, and Amazon is to some extent
capitalizing off marketing activity aimed at other outlets. The Kindle store
prices books below the paper editions deliberately to divert sales into its
walled garden; I'm pretty certain that if Bezos sold books via Kindle for the
same price as he does on paper, sales would drop significantly. And if you
market a book solely at Kindle owners, you'll only get reviews and word-of-
mouth mojo from Kindle owners.

(Dammit, typing into a seven-line text box is so 1980s!)

Anyway, to summarize: If you self-publish, whether in electronic form or on
paper, you'll get nowhere unless you understand how book marketing and the
book supply chain works. The Kindle store is not a marketing tool, it's merely
a delivery/fulfillment vector, and it doesn't get you around the need to
market your book. The high-selling Kindle books may very well be boosted by
the positive externalities generated by publishers' marketing activities aimed
at increasing sales through other channels. In other words: don't believe the
hype!

------
javery
Comparing music(ipods, mp3s) with books is really a broken comparison. The
first reason is that switching between an album, CD, and mp3 I have the exact
same experience. Reading a digital book and a paper book are still very
different experiences to me. Physical books have advantages over digital
books, no batteries, better type, the ability to read during take-off and
landing, etc. CDs vs. MP3s are basically the same on all of those fronts.

You also have to factor in that books are usually single use, which means more
people will go to the library or give their book away when they are done
reading it. This is all legal now, as soon as it's digital they will become
criminals?

------
jsz0
Print books aren't going to die. They will decline in popularity and
eventually become a niche market. Very few popular technologies (and print was
bleeding edge tech in its day) just die out completely. I have a huge pet
peeve with this "death of ___" / "X kills Y" literal disease people seem to
have these days. Think about what you're saying and you'll realize it's
actually a very silly way to phrase what is otherwise a good point. It draws
in the casual reader with drama but it probably makes a lot of people dismiss
you as being naive.

~~~
Perceval
I have to say, I fear the day when people who prefer print books are looked
upon like the vinyl snobs of the music world.

~~~
derefr
When, to get a book printed, you'll have to take the assumably digital-only
copy to a single-copy press, it'll be very similar to converting CDs to vinyl.
I just wonder who the commercial market will be, as DJs are for vinyl?

~~~
jsz0
Probably the folks who use bookshelves as physical proof they are super smart
and deep. Hiding it all away on a tiny e-book reader wouldn't serve their
purpose.

~~~
derefr
Some people show off vacation photos all over their houses. Even then, though,
you don't usually get a good sampling of that person's travels by the few
pictures they chose, and had space, to present. I opted instead for having one
poster-sized digital pictureframe (well, okay, it's a screen inset in the wall
with a hidden PC, but the interface is the same), which shuffles through all
the photos—a much better sampling, and you eventually see everything if you
watch long enough, without having to hunt down the scapbooks in the attic.
Having said this, I wouldn't be surprised if there were an analogous device
for ebooks—perhaps a touchscreen marqueeing a steady stream of your favorite
quotes from each book, each of which displays the appropriate cover and either
pushes the book itself via Bluetooth, or begins dictation from the audiobook
version.

------
davidw
When Knuth looks good in an eBook, then I'll consider it.

Not that I actually sit around and read his books, but I think they're
beautifully done, and in any case, I want to be able to read formulas, source
code, and so on and so forth just as the author intended it to be read.

------
Kliment
The printed book is not going away. The printed book publisher might be. I
bought a book from Lulu a while ago, and it was a pretty nice experience.
Shipping takes a while (unless you pay outrageous courier rates) but the
service is decent, and quality is good. What they do is much closer to the
Kindle model, and does satisfy the need to have your own printed book that you
can read in no-device locations and away from power sources. I think it's
self-publishing that is the important bit, not ebooks.

------
ugh
"For the first time in history, the discovery of writing talent will depend
more on skill and persistence than on luck."

Really? Sure, the selection process will be less centralized, less monolithic.
But way too many authors will still compete for way too little attention. And
to win they will still need luck. Hopefully less, but still.

~~~
iuhygfbhn
>"For the first time in history, the discovery of writing talent will depend
more on skill and persistence than on luck." No it will go back to patronage
like it was a few hundred years ago.

But now instead of a dedication to the king to get your self-published book
read, you need to know a famous blogger who will get it noticed by the NT or
Oprah.

------
ivenkys
I don't think the author has completely thought this through. Yes a "new" way
of publishing i.e. self-publishing on electronic media is now possible but
extrapolating that and making the leap to say that the Printed Book is itself
becoming obsolete sounds quite far-fetched.

I cannot imagine something like SICP on the kindle , where will i make my
notes - where will i jot down the failed approaches i took to solve a problem
and most importantly where is the tactile feel of turning a page and reading a
book.

------
stingraycharles
Well that seems kind of obvious: Amazon customers already are a very specific
subset of all the book sales, and I bet they are far more willing to read an
ebook than the average book reader.

For an article that promises the death of the printed book, I do find it
strange that it almost solely focuses on the increase of ebook sales, rather
than the decline of print sales. Could there perhaps be a new audience of
people who would only read ebooks and no print editions? The only real
information provided about this in the article seems to be a quote from an
author who assesses he will earn more from ebooks than from print sales in 6
years time, but this is just one example and can depend upon the audience of
the author: I bet ebooks will do better for SF fiction than ancient history
literature.

~~~
BerislavLopac
_I bet ebooks will do better for SF fiction than ancient history literature_

Why?

~~~
stingraycharles
Because of the audience: I suspect the average SF fiction reader will be more
tech savvy than the average ancient history reader. Since ebooks are a new
development, I think it's fair to say that they have a better market
penetration with tech savvy people.

~~~
BerislavLopac
_I suspect the average SF fiction reader will be more tech savvy than the
average ancient history reader_

Again, why? The topic doesn't determine the tech-savvyness of its readers, at
least not in the way you suggest. Particularly, ancient history is an academic
subject, and it will likely follow the general pattern in academia, with
younger people being more acquainted with technology (with minority exceptions
in both directions).

Consider dinosaurs: I don't think there is a less tech-heavy topic (unless the
poor dinos used computers, dunno), but I'm pretty sure that a vast majority of
people interested in them have been familiar with computers at least since
college age.

~~~
stingraycharles
Ok, well, I guess you could be right, I don't know -- it wasn't really the
point of why I mentioned it.

As you can see, I used the example SF versus history to illustrate that the
sales statistics of ebooks versus print can be different depending upon the
author's target audience, which I think is true: I don't believe the
percentage sales of ebooks versus print is the same in all categories. When
used as an argument why the printed book is dying, we should therefore put the
sales numbers from one author in this perspective.

------
BerislavLopac
The point of the article is not so much in the death of the printed book, it's
in the emergence of e-books as a viable business model for authors. But I
don't think that much really changes here -- instead of signing a traditional
contract with a publisher, the authors make new ones with Amazon, who is
actually a new kind of publisher.

Just like traditional publishers, Amazon has a vested interest in the success
of your book (the more you sell the more they earn), so they do (or will do)
all the things that traditional publishers used to do in terms of promotion
and marketing, except that they have the tools and technologies allowing them
to be more efficient and handle more titles and authors simultaneously.

Also, they own the platform at this point, but this will change in time
(Kindle is a great product, but others will soon follow). We've seen it all
before when there was a monopoly (medieval monks) of the platform, but the
underlying standard (latin alphabet) was open and new technology (printing
press) allowed others to produce more final products. And the effect was that
the publishers appeared as middlemen between creation and production.

So yes, the printed books are going the way of the dodo, just like previous
technologies which were replaced by better alternatives, like steam engines,
CRT monitors or black records. But the business model remains the same, and as
always only those players who can adapt will survive; so there isn't much of a
revolution here.

~~~
iuhygfbhn
>Just like traditional publishers, Amazon has a vested interest in the success
of your book

They have an interest in the success of books - in general.

But just like any publisher they will only spend time, money, space promoting
their author that will sell the most.

The danger with amazon is that when they become the only publisher in the
world there is only one promoted author. Once they have 'their' JK Rowling or
Tom Clancy it is not in their interest to promote an alternative one. At least
with traditional publishers there is competition.

------
Perceval
Until they develop a really good note-taking / annotation system, I think
academics are going to remain buyers of printed books for a long time. I think
a well-done annotation system could be a big value-add for e-books, if those
annotations were searchable, or operated like tags, etc. But until that day,
the ability to scribble notes in the margins, underline key points in the
text, and make comments on the back pages is going to be indispensable.

------
tungstenfurnace
I hope printed books will not die because there is a big advantage to having
text that is readable decades or centuries later.

Much precious information will be lost to our descendants because the data
formats of websites and e-books will become obsolete.

If you want to preserve data then emulate nature's approach to seed dispersal.
Produce multiple hardcopies of your photos and writings and mail them to
friends and relatives!

~~~
billswift
I have read this complaint before, and it is wrong. Most, probably nearly all,
digital information will be translated into new formats as they become
important, largely because it will be increasingly automated and increasingly
inexpensive (both because of the automation and because newer hardware is
cheaper).

~~~
tungstenfurnace
What you say is perfectly reasonable regarding popular content like movies and
novels. Even computer games. However, of personal data like photos and
writings, much will be lost. People (or their children or their grandchildren,
etc) won't bother to convert everything to new formats and they won't bother
to copy all files when they upgrade hardware. Alternatively, they could upload
their data to a third party who, for an annual fee, would store and
continually upgrade the files to newer formats. However, companies go bust.
Conversion software is buggy. Passwords get lost or not handed on. Descendants
go through financial bad patches. A single break in the chain is enough to
destroy information.

Thus to preserve data you really do have mingle it with hardware and mass
reproduce the whole thing. In the biological analogy, genes are the data, DNA
is the medium and the rest of the seed is the 'reader'. Making hundreds or
thousands of copies ensures against total loss.

~~~
billswift
Actually, closed source software, like most games is the bigger risk. I think
that as drive sizes continue to grow, and with cloud-sourced backups, more
stuff will simply be automatically translated. And most personal photos and
writings are already lost, and always have been. More will almost certainly be
saved in the future, not least because digital photos are shareable and
copiable at minimal cost unlike the past. Print photos and handwritten
journals were far too expensive to copy, and were expensive to store and move,
most were lost every generation.

Hacker News is the last place I would have expected to have to defend the
obvious improvements available in digital media.

------
grandpa
People didn't stop going to the movies when VHS movies came out.

People didn't stop buying CDs when MP3 came out.

Come to that, people didn't stop telling stories when books came out.

~~~
BerislavLopac
You're comparing apples to oranges. They share some features, but not all, and
even not too many. Ebooks do share all the important features of books, at
least when readers like Kindle are taken into consideration. Ebooks have
existed for a long time without replacing books because the experience was far
from similar, but that is changing now.

------
bprater
What happens with traditional book stores? Are they going to slowly go the way
of Blockbuster?

------
ggruschow
His argument works just as well for createspace/lulu/etc physical books as
ebooks.

------
rick_2047
I like to think of the topic from a different angle. According to me a
technology as handy as an printed book can never die. As an analogy I would
like to present the case of radio v/s TV.

Before the advent of TV radio was the main mode of entertainment. But as TV
started to take over the market everyone speculated that radio may never be
able to catch up and will die for sure.But radio still exists. Why?Because it
now survives in very small but concentrated markets like car radios.(I know
mp3players are now more dominant in developed countries like the US,but for
developing countries and other less privileged people radio is still a luxury
in cars and taxis).New radio stations are being created and now in my city i
have 6 options where when six to seven years back there was just 2.

In the same way, paper books may never lose there market and may never die.
There would be always an increasing number of book stores springing up at
every corner.Devices like kindle have surely revolutionized the eBook
market,but we must except that what kindle did was make a market of its own
rather than attracting attention from other markets.

Also due to the mindless DRM's and copyright issues with ebooks, you may never
have the pleasure of having the feeling that you OWN the book. You cannot lend
it to a friend, you cannot store it somewhere other than your kindle,you
cannot redeem half its value at a second hand book shop. These special
privileges are only offered by a good old printed paper book which you can
carry in your hand.

------
njharman
> I have some data

> everyone my age has at least played with one or knows someone who has one.
> Amazon has been pushing it massively and adoption is only going to
> accelerate

Um, that's not data of the "valid to support sweeping conclustions" sort.

Insert questionable math based on single point of data 35% sales, from single
source, for a narrow datum "books available both in print and on Kindle.

> In spite of the shortcomings and shortcuts, I think my model provides a good
> ballpark estimate

Yeah, I think you're full of hot air and bull shit.

