55 ms·
No one buys books
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- ergonaught 3y agoIt’s me. I’m No One. Because I buy them every week. So does my wife. I guess we are No One.
- tolciho 3y agoBeing no one might help you escape that cyclops.
- mr90210 3y agoI ordered 3 books yesterday, so I was a bit surprised by the headline. Amazon might disagree with that headline.
- stubish 3y agoHow does it feel to be part of the 1%? You are the publishing industry equivalent of a whale.
- devbent 3y agoBooks are too expensive to buy every week in any quantity greater than 1. I read 7-12 new books a week to my son, I'd go bankrupt if it wasn't for libraries. (We typically read 5-10 books a day, ur the 12 books we get from the library each week have an uneven distribution of what gets read again and again). Presumably as my son gets older we'll move to books that take longer to read and the absolute # will go down. Back when I was single and didn't have a kid, I'd go through 2 or 3 long form fiction books a week. At that point in life, Half Priced Books (the book store chain with that name) was my financial savior. Books are expensive. A kids picture book is easily $15-$20, with outliers costing even more. Whenever I do go book shopping with my son we end up spending almost $200.
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- eslaught 3y agoI wish I had gotten to the comment section earlier because the top-level summary of this article is simply incorrect. The majority of the revenue of the Big 5 publishers may come from celebrities and repeat best-sellers. But the majority of the profit comes from the un-anticipated best sellers: books that the publishers offer low advances but end up going on to vastly out-sell expectations. While some of those books may have ended up in the "anticipated top selling books" category identified in the trial, the point is that their eventual sales are vastly greater than anticipated, for whatever level was offered. This means that the rest of their publishing business is absolutely not a "vanity project": it is the business of publishing itself. The reason why these publishers have a backlist (older books that earn a profit long after release) is because of the unanticipated best-sellers. The trial data makes it very clear that publishers (and authors) are actually better at pricing the very high-end books and therefore the profits are typically less (because authors have more leverage to get a fair price in their initial negotiations). So TL;DR: publishers hope to find promising, but under-rated, authors who may potentially go on to become best-sellers. They continue to fund the books of such authors (despite generally not making a profit) because the few that do fund the rest of the business. But (ironically) once such authors are actually established as best-selling franchise authors, those very same authors' ability to negotiate drives profit margins down, which drives the endless search for fresh talent in the publishing industry. I feel like I finally need to complete my own analysis of the trial results, because I don't think this is well understood.
- stevetron 3y agoSo much discussion about children's books, yet they don't mention The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Rick Brandt, Ken Holt, Nancy Drew, Dig Allen, Tom Corbett, Dana Girls, Trixie Belden, Donna Parker, Brains Benton, Power Boys, Sandy Steele, Biff Brewster, Judy Bolton, and all the shenanigans of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
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- sigio 3y agoNo one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based. Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)
- constantcrying 3y agoSurely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc. The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?
- vundercind 3y ago50 or 100 years ago, people read a hell of a lot more fiction than they do now.
- constantcrying 3y agoI suspect in the past they also read far more nonfiction.
- vundercind 3y agoI wouldn’t bet on it, unless we’re counting user-generated posts online, and clickbait “articles”. Which, maybe we should. [edit] JFC I misread your sense of “read”, I think we agree.
- constantcrying 3y agoUpdated my post. I don't think I encountered that "bug" in the English language before.
- matwood 3y agoTrue for fiction books. But if you think about fiction generally, as the poster said, the medium has changed. People still love fiction, but now it's movies and shows.
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- vundercind 3y agoYep. No money in it short of not just getting optioned for TV or film, but an actual released production. Even then, a hit or two likely won’t pay as much as you’d think. Some pretty damn successful authors have boring day jobs, or stopped after a handful of “successful” books that didn’t make them much money and went back to a normal corporate career. The other option is to crank out (ha, ha) short romance novels like a machine and market like mad. The money’s in hard work at writing porn, or in big broad-audience grand slams, probably written at a junior high reading level, with a small niche supporting a handful of authors in writing based-on-a-true-story stuff (bonus if “true crime” connection) aimed directly at getting optioned for film or tv (but that one’s very hard to break into, studios have some go-to authors for that stuff and you ain’t one of them)
- WolfeReader 3y agoHaven't libraries already been a "Netflix of books" for millenia now?
- bee_rider 3y agoSome libraries have movie sections, making them the Netflix of DVDs, in an odd twist.
- AlbertCory 3y agoMine doesn't have this book, anyway. $94 for a used copy /s
- jbverschoor 3y agoDid you mean to read <insert related book that's not in the subscription>?
- paxys 3y agoHow much of the population has access to well stocked libraries?
- dredmorbius 3y agoWithin the US, virtually any resident of a large city or major metropolitan area, which is over 85% of the population: <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/12/us/census-results-data https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/12/us/census-results-da...>. This is also one of the areas in which the Internet has actually delivered on early promise (though the success has been a long time coming, and remains precarious): the Internet Archive offers access to over 20 million records, and aims to have a web page for every book ever published. Note that this still isn't full access to all material, but it's quite good. <https://openlibrary.org/about https://openlibrary.org/about> The US Library of Congress has also been expanding its public access, as have other large public libraries (the New York Public Library notably). LoC also have specific programmes aimed at disabled readers such as its NLS BARD programme for the visually- and reading-disabled. <https://federalnewsnetwork.com/open-datatransparency/2022/02/library-of-congress-expanded-online-content-in-response-to-the-pandemic/ https://federalnewsnetwork.com/open-datatransparency/2022/02...> <https://www.loc.gov/nls/how-to-enroll/sign-up-for-bard-and-bard-mobile/ https://www.loc.gov/nls/how-to-enroll/sign-up-for-bard-and-b...>
- bombcar 3y agoThe entire book industry rides on the backs of bibles, hobbits, and extremely ravenous caterpillars. Seems almost poetic, somehow.
- jackstraw14 3y agohow many years of print dominance? welcome our overlords.
- vundercind 3y agoI gotta admit: I rarely make time for any recent fiction. Too busy catching up on the last 5,000 years. I don’t expect that to change before I die. Film has a similar problem—there are plausibly low-thousands existing films worth my time, a whole lot of them 30+ years old. I could never watch a film made after 2000 and not run out of good entertainment in my lifetime. They’re damn lucky the Mouse got copyright extended to a century or more.
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoThis is the argument I bring up whenever people start ranting about how widespread torrenting means we will never have new music or movies. Who cares? I have multiple lifetimes of good stuff to enjoy already.
- greenie_beans 3y agoread "the sarah book" or "crapalachia" by scott mcclananhan if you want to read fiction from a living author that should be included in your reading list for the past 5k years of language arts.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s also a highly effective sorting algorithm - anything still talked about ten years after it came out is probably worth some time. I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively quickly see all US animated kids movies …
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- xg15 3y agoWell, if there's any comfort: The AI will definitely read your book...
- dakiol 3y agoSo, I usually think in terms of longevity. I do own some books, because in case computers don’t work anymore, well I can still read good stuff. I have plenty of PDFs/epubs in my laptop because the internet may not work anymore anytime. I do have some stuff in the cloud, but just for convenience (I don’t care if those files disappear). Same with music, movies and video games. I want to be able to “run” stuff offline. Electricity is still a big dependency (i’m looking into solar panels)
- bigstrat2003 3y agoI'm the same way, and also: I want to not have to pay a subscription fee forever. Once I have what I want, then that's it! I'm don't need to spend another dime. But if I use Spotify or whatever, I have to keep paying forever. It is a much worse deal.
- matwood 3y agoThe difference between music and books is time investment. New music comes out all the time, and I'm always discovering old music. A subscription works great for music because I can listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider myself a reader.
- bombcar 3y agoAnd even with books it becomes much easier to say “I’ll reread the lord of the rings on this flight” than it is to take a wild risk on an unknown book and author.
- quectophoton 3y ago> A subscription works great for music because I can listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider myself a reader. It can work for books too, kinda. You can check "J-Novel Club" for an existing example. Chapters are translated in parts, and each part is released ASAP to subscribers, before the whole thing is translated (though they're clear that it's still a WIP). It's also extremely common for... uh... "gray-zone indie translators" to translate web novels from Japanese into English, and release the translations first to Patreon supporters, and a week later to everyone else. Granted, everything I'm saying is very specific to the niche of JP novels.
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- joshuamcginnis 3y agoI'm currently writing a book about independent thinking and I have zero expectations that it will sell even a single copy. However, the net gain I will get from having completed the goal of writing the book is invaluable to me personally.
- gizmo 3y agoI have read a couple of books on that subject and they all disappointed. I will gladly buy your book if it's original work.
- joshuamcginnis 3y agoThat's encouraging. It's definitely not fluff and original. The feedback would be valuable even if you don't end up liking it.
- IlliOnato 3y agoSame here
- bjelkeman-again 3y agoI had this idea for a hard science fiction story that I have been thinking about for years. Nobody else is going to write it, so I started. 20 000 words in my beta readers say it is good, so I think I will continue. And I don’t expect to sell it, but I want to know what happens and so do the beta readers. So on we go.
- mbbbackus 3y agoCurrently in the same boat! When you say beta readers, do you mean other friends/writers or like people on twitter
- bjelkeman-again 3y agoA mix of people who are known and good readers and some on Reddit /r/hfy
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- thyrsus 3y agoDoes this include technical books? O'Reilly and Manning seem to have substantial customers. Or is the licensing of PDFs excluded from such figures?
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- bombcar 3y agoTechnical books are part of it, and O’Reilly can probably do much more accurate forecasting on their titles than others do, but they still have total reach problems. If I think of all the technical things I’ve done, there are some I’ve bought lots of books for, and others I’ve never bought a book at all, including some relatively major languages.
- _delirium 3y agoThe article only covers data for the Big Five publishers, who are: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan.
- WillAdams 3y agoTurn it around: How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read? How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this? Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books traditionally take up has been replaced by: - encyclopedias --- Wikipedia - magazines/newspapers --- Facebook and social media - dime store novels --- fan fiction and webcomics Time was that the way to be successful w/ a self-published book was to manage to get it bought by the ~9,000 library systems in the U.S. --- how many of these books are being purchased by libraries?
- ozim 3y agoIn Poland we publish 9000 new books each year, of course initial runs are like 500-1k copies. Not sure how it breaks down in detail on types like science publications and else but average person reads 1 book a year, avid readers read 7 and above but they are 1% of the population. Just some stats as I watched discussion on this topic. I think the question was rhetorical but feels like a nice thing to add.
- WillAdams 3y agoYes, that's exactly the sort of thing I was reaching for. Curious what the distribution is for types of books. In the U.S., bookstores lose money almost the entire year --- only making money for the Christmas holidays.
- roughly 3y ago> How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read? > How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this? I mean, the thing is, people aren't reading books, they're reading instagram. We haven't substituted one knowledge-accumulating method for another, we've replaced books with social media. If you want to talk about which one generates or propagates more information-as-knowledge, that's an interesting conversation, but I think the effective mechanism here is someone figured out how to hypercharge the dopamine roller-coaster to a degree that books just can't compete.
- keyle 3y agoThe same could be said about the game industry and the music industry. 1% of the industry thrives while the rest is a sinking stone. That said I bought three books this week, but it's a rare occurrence... and I'm pretty sure they're re-printed by Amazon.
- yreg 3y agoAren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever? Or do you mean boardgames? Those seem to be doing alright as well though.
- yreg 3y agoI recently started buying paper books. Yes, it's not particularly ecological, but I found that I'm able to focus at the text much better this way. My Kindle (despite plenty of obvious advantages) just doesn't really work for me. It took me years to realize this, but I always start to tinker with the brightness settings, switch pages back and forth, go into the book library and back, play with highlighting words, etc. I will do anything instead of reading the text. Meanwhile with a paper book I don't have an urge to flip a page back and forth and observe how it behaves. I can focus on the text. Not sure why I am this way.
- acchow 3y agoThese sound like common traits for ADHDers.
- iamacyborg 3y agoPaper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections. I can skim through a shelf full of books in a way that I’m just not able to with ebooks, even with stuff like full text search available in Calibre.
- SubmarineClub 3y agoAnother benefit to paper books, in my experience, is it's a lot easier to remember the rough location of a particular passage (towards the front, middle, near the end, etc.) than with digital A progress bar really doesn't replace the context of the stack of pages behind and ahead of your current page.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoIt's pretty easy to highlight passages with most e-reader software. Some even let you write a note that goes with the highlight. You can then look through a list of all highlighted passages.
- Tor3 3y ago
- grecy 3y agoI've published a few self-published books on Amazon about my global adventures. While sales are not making me rich, they certainly do sell month after month.
- bombcar 3y agoSelf-publishing avoids the biggest single cost, the advance! It can actually be moderately successful for the right type of author. I’ve always thought the “book collection of webcomics/blogs” has to be moderately predictable as to sales.
- echelon_musk 3y agoAnecdotally I'm buying and reading more books now than at any other point in my life. Reading gets me away from a computer screen, which I would otherwise stare at from sunrise to sundown. I tend to be a late adopter. Once things are close to obsolete I usually get involved! Although books have the disadvantage of being a similar focal distance as a screen and for this reason is still bad for my eyesight!
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y agoI buy paper books with cash to prevent tracking of my reading habits.
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- jodrellblank 3y agoCalvin and Hobbes, 1993 - https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/12/07 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/12/07
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- AlbertCory 3y agoI've asked a number of agents online for two numbers: 1) How many unsolicited queries have you received, in whatever time period you like: month, quarter, year, forever? 2) How many turned into published books? None will provide that data, but I strongly suspect that the answer to #2 is "zero." They'll happily quote you BS quantities, like "a bunch" or "a handful." So as this article says, they spend their time chasing celebrities, online influencers, and friends of friends. And not making a whole lot of money anyway.
- kyleyeats 3y agoYou used to pitch your book to publishers. Now you pitch your audience.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI think that's true, actually.
- greenie_beans 3y agothis is true for non-fiction for sure
- x0x0 3y agoThat's always been the case; it's merely a proxy for likely sales. It used to be that audience was demonstrated by previous sales; now it can be proved by being a celebrity, twitch/twitter/instagram/whatever followers, etc.
- tptacek 3y agoI don't think this is what the article says at all. It says that publishers make all their money celebrities and the backlist, and that those titles pay for all the midlist titles, most of which don't recoup their advances. It's not like publishers can simply decide to focus on new and midlist authors. The books that sell, sell. The top line of this article is well described by its title.
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- bluedays 3y agoJust going to drop this here: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-... This comes up constantly and it’s just wrong.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoThe 50% being under 12 copies is too implausibly low to believe. Wouldn’t your friends and family alone exceed that?
- iamacyborg 3y agoOn the flipside, it’s nice that there’s a thriving small and fine press community out there with lots of news press’ appearing over the last few years and some really beautiful books being published.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago>> Obviously, given the number of people searching on Amazon for products, that gives them a huge advantage because when people go onto Amazon, they—if the book isn’t there for what they are searching for, they could create that book. This is a really weird thing to say. It seems to assume that people are indifferent to the quality of the writing in the books they read.
- eszed 3y agoLooking at the best-selling Amazon-published titles leaves the impression that this is the case.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThe observation in the essay that "the romance category has already gone independent" also leaves that impression - for the romance category. But the fact that one of two profitable genres is "franchise authors" suggests the opposite. Franchise authors become franchise authors by producing high-quality writing.
- eszed 3y agoWhat does "franchise author" mean? I'm not familiar with the term.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIt means an author whose books do well. Examples given in the essay include Tom Clancy and Stephen King.
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- kayodelycaon 3y agoYeah. I'm a member of the Furry Writer's Guild and in a few anthologies. This is a discussion that comes up occasionally. The sad fact is a lot of people don't read and furry fandom is pretty niche market to start with. Art and music are a lot easier to consume. It's really easy to get disillusioned and give up.
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- lrvick 3y agoMost books today are sold with DRM and when the DRM servers are deactivated the books stop working. This happened with the Microsoft ebooks store and has happened with countless other DRM media. Sometimes books are automatically revised, or censored. Sometimes accounts holding DRM licenses are deleted or deactivated by mistake. The only way to actually own a book these days is to buy it on paper, or from one of the rare few publishers that do not use DRM. If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book scanner or send it to a scanning service.
- doug_durham 3y agoThe books sold through Apple Books are all sold without DRM. That's pretty standard now.
- daveoc64 3y agoThat's not at all standard. Most books Apple sells come with DRM. This section of the Apple documentation explains how a publisher can control whether DRM is used for their book: https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/support/30-manage-book-rights-pricing https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/support/30-manage-book... All of the major eBook stores sell books with and without DRM (including Amazon Kindle, Rakuten Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play Books). Whether an individual book includes DRM on all of these stores is down to the publisher, and you won't typically see books from the major publishers offered without DRM.
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- II2II 3y agoI am fairly certain that most, if not all, mass market ebooks use DRM tied to the software. If the servers go, the books will be fine for as long as the software continues to work. There are also authors and publishers who offer books without DRM. Please note: I do not like DRM. I simply view disinformation as a good way to loose good will from those who would otherwise support a cause.
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- ethbr1 3y ago>> Q. And Penguin Random House pays Amazon to improve its search results? >> A. There is something that is available to our publishers, it’s called Amazon Marketing Services, AMS, and all publishers can spend money and give it to Amazon to have hopefully better search results. >> — Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House Wait, "hopefully better"? What the hell is Amazon selling, magic publishing advertising snake oil? If I'm paying for placement, I'd expect something more than hope.
- russellbeattie 3y agoIt's a protection racket. Here's how it works: The big companies that pay for AMS get listed ahead of companies that don't in the search results. Since they all pay, it means that the top results are basically ranked the same as if none of them paid. But if you don't pay, your books will appear in the "organic" results - after all the marketed ones - essentially destroying any chance of being seen. This way Amazon can claim that their search results are fair and algorithmic, protecting them from accusations of monopolistic practices. AMS is a simple paid marketing service, not at all like a tax or protection money, right? But what's really happening is companies are paying just to make sure they're included somewhere in the top results rather than the organic ones, which no one bothers to look at. They do the same for their App Store search on Fire TVs. No rev share? Good luck finding that app - even if you search for it by name. So "hopefully better" is all the publishers are paying for.
- paxys 3y agoCan't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarter give 10x more. What's sad though is that publishers have historically had one power that would have been unassailable – editorial judgement. They could have sustained their brands on quality. Imagine a world where you wanted something good to read, and among all the garbage out there saw a title and went "this one is by Simon & Schuster, it has to be good". Instead they went all in on pulp bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good authors, and here we are.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. Publishers have been shafting authors for centuries. I'll shed no tears on their behalf.
- Spivak 3y agoPrior to the digital age where it's possible for the author to self-publish the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of selling books and giving authors 15%. So while I think it's been hard to make a living as an author I don't think it's necessarily the publisher's fault. Better to be the one's selling shovels than the ones mining for gold.
- thfuran 3y ago>the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of selling books It seems to me that you're rather underestimating the importance of having something to put in the book.
- vidarh 3y agoHaving written two novels, I will tell you it's far less work for a lot of writers to write the thing than getting decent sales. It varies - some do slave over their manuscripts for years, while others churn them out in a week, but selling books is hard work.
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- jaberwooky 3y agoBooks are like the wayback machine. You can reread authors as they actually wrote their oeuvres without editing from modern day overzealous publishers who censor or otherwise alter the originals.
- zilti 3y agoAt least as long as you manage to find an old, not-yet-mutilated version...
- Kon-Peki 3y agoI'm in a very heavy library family; we are checking out and reading a few hundred books per year between all of us. Yet we still buy a few books, and I bet that if we made an inventory of the books we currently own that are in the house, it would number in the hundreds. But... most were purchased secondhand. I take my daughter to the bookstore every few months; it is always busy. While she is browsing, I also look around. I'd buy half a dozen or more books on each visit if it weren't for the price. At retail price, books aren't a good deal. Even buying a paper copy of a public domain book will run $15-20. Why?
- HenryBemis 3y ago> book will run $15-20 Everybody needs to get paid, and everybody needs to make a profit. The folks that store the books (think Wholesale), the movers/couriers, the retail that has to pay rent/employees/etc _and_ make a profit. The consider that (depending on the country) there is a VAT on that book. It slowly adds up. I remember in Brighton back in the 90s I had found a second hand bookstore, that had 5x the books per sqm comparing to the Barnes & Noble in the center of London. B&N had wide corridors, the shelves on the perimeter were all the way to the ceiling, but the non-walled ones were 1.5m high. And considering that they wanted the books to look cool, they were nicely spaced. Now when you compare this to the second hand bookstore, where presentation is not 'a thing'.. you got many-many more books per sqm, and the authors/publishers don't need to get paid again. But still.. a second hand book will always been 1/3 to 1/4 of a new book (from own experience). EDIT: I sometimes think that if my life takes a very dark turn, and for whatever reason I end up poor and alone, I will find the smallest/cheapest possible village that has a public library back to my country of origin, and I will be spending max amount of hours in that library.. free wifi, free heating/cooling, and ALL the books I can read(hey, my name is Henry Bemis after all!!)
- eszed 3y agoOff-topic, but wow there were some good used bookstores in Brighton. I think I know the one you mean, but the quirkiest was the one with a massive pile (literally a pile) of unshelved, uncategorized books in the basement. Hardbacks were £1, paperbacks 50p. It smelled faintly of mould down there, and there were some chairs and beanbags (the beanbags were too dodgy for me to sit in, lol) around the edges, so we'd sneak in cans of beer and spend the afternoon going through the pile and reading what we found. Once or twice the owner shouted down the stairs that he was going to the pub and to turn off the lights and make sure the door was locked when we left. Sometimes I miss being young and poor. I'm not sure I'd enjoy spending a day like that anymore, and I'm not sure why.
- mlsu 3y agoBooks are a vestigial organ. Nobody uses books as their primary mode of accessing information about the world anymore. What is interesting is that the cultural mores around this vestigial organ have persisted to such a great degree. Harry Potter Books are a psycho-social mechanism of self-construction more than an actual work of fiction. The phenomenon of "I am a bookish person who reads Harry Potter" as a psychological thing that people do is larger and more significant than the actual story of Harry the young wizard. Likewise, the phenomenon of "I am a successful luminary who has written a book" is more important than the actual content of the book itself. Celebrities paying ghostwriters to write books and going to book signings to sign a book for people who will never actually read the book. A perfectly airtight simulacra.
- zilti 3y agoMost Harry Potter fans have never even read the books, but just seen the films, further supporting your argument
- sandspar 3y agoYou're talking about midwits or whatever. Millions of very intelligent people still get most of their knowledge from books. Books remain the highest octane fuel.
- WolfeReader 3y agoI think I can rewrite this post using simpler language: "I don't read books, and I assume nobody else does too. People who read fun stories have ulterior motives besides enjoying the stories. (As opposed to the honest motives of people who enjoy movies or music, or other media) People who write books have ulterior, egotistical motives to do so. Celebrities sometimes write memoirs. See, this proves something! The above points show that books are a "vestigial organ" and a "simulacra." " Did I miss anything?
- mikl 3y agoHello, I’m no-one.
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- satvikpendem 3y agoThe only major reading I do these days is via audiobooks, I simply read them faster than via visually looking at the page. It might be my attention span, but somehow audio is just faster to literally cram words into the mind at high speed than consciously moving your eyes over a page.
- Tor3 3y agoI'm the opposite - I read many times faster than audio, so I have big problems with using e.g. Youtube to get information. It feels agonizingly slow to get the information over. I feel like I could get that in two minutes of reading versus listening for half an hour. When I read novels I take a few pages - depending on what I read - to get my mind into the story, and from then on what's written isn't text on paper (or e-reader) anymore, it's just a story unfolding in my mind. I don't "see" the text.
- satvikpendem 3y agoI know what you mean with the last sentence, it feels the same for me when reading text too in that it disappears if I'm engrossed in the story. However, for audio, I listen at 3 to 5x speed so audio can be magnitudes faster than text. You should probably try increasing the speed of your YouTube videos, that's also what I do, plus I use add-ons like SponsorBlock which provide a "skip to video highlight" button as well as cutting out all of the filler content in a video.
- simonblack 3y agoPaper Books for random-access Technical Reference. Electronic Books for General 'Beginning-to-End', or 'Story-Telling' reading. In general, though most books can be either paper or electronic depending on personal convenience at the time. It's not a 'Black and White', 'One Thing or the Other' choice. Both formats are as good as the other if need be. I use both. "Works for Me."
- anigbrowl 3y agoWeird, I have the exact opposite preference. I do like looking things up in paper reference books, but a lot of the time I remember context well enough that I can type a key phrase and have it instantly. I prefer learning from paper, so if it's a scientific paper that's too complex/deep to just skim and longer than 10-15 pages I'll often print it. Reading for pleasure on the other hand, I will only do on paper. The physicality of the book, down to the wrinkles and texture of the paper, are part of the enjoyment.
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- tstrimple 3y agoI wish my daughters would stop reading books (not really) so I could stop buying them all the time (happy to pay this expense). I was worried for a while because my wife and I are both voracious readers, but none of our children seemed to be developing a similar love for literature. That changed practically overnight. They went from Anime to Manga to YA lit to full blown novels in less than a year. Their tastes are still very particular, so we can't reliably go to a used book store to find things they are willing to try. But each time we go to buy them books, their selections get a little more varied than before. The latest game is "How many books can I get?". I think they know perfectly well that I'll buy them as many books as they want because I've never told them I wouldn't buy them a book. So in a way it's them exploring their own impulsiveness and desire to consume versus what they consider to be reasonable. I always make them set their own limit. But I'm also fortunate to be a tech worker who doesn't have to even think about budgeting for books. Telling them no has never been a practical consideration here.
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- Koshkin 3y agoSince years back I already can’t help but keep thinking of paper books as nothing but printouts of text files. (And I no longer want or need printouts.)
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- bodantogat 3y agoTo add to the woes of the publishing industry, a lot of sales are lost due to piracy. $300MM a year for the US alone (per a 2019 article). https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/07/28/us-publishers-are-still-losing-300-million-annually-to-ebook-piracy/?sh=2f551966319e https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2019/07/28/us-publish...
- paxys 3y ago> according to data from the Authors Guild Despite the narrative that copyright holders in every industry like to push, a pirated copy is not equal to a lost sale. Their actual losses are likely a small fraction of that number.
- owlninja 3y agoIs the thinking that the person who pirated it was never going to buy it anyways?
- paxys 3y agoThey may or may not have bought it, but the calculations of "lost sales" assume that 100% of them would have bought it at full price, which is absurd. I'd wager it is closer to 10%.
- eszed 3y agoIn my lifetime I've easily bought 100x more books used than new, which (from their perspective) is economically indistinguishable from piracy. Any of those "lost sales" estimates strike me as entirely bogus.
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- stacktraceyo 3y agoI like paper books. I get alot of enjoyment from giving them to friends to read. To me it’s like the difference between when I used to make a mix tape or mix cd and give to someone vs sharing a Spotify playlist. Also I find that it adds character. Like if someone comes into my house they can see what type of stuff I’m into via my “analog” music movies and books.
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- bachmeier 3y agoThe headline isn't accurate. "No One Buys Most Books" maybe, but the article talks about books that sell more than 300,000 copies in a year. 90% of books sell fewer than 2000 copies in a year, but 2000 is actually a decent number, especially considering it will be a lot more than 2000 over the lifetime of the book. There's more to this as well. You have to factor in that a lot of people write books because they want to say they wrote a book, and others do it because it supports their professional brand, so there was never an intention or expectation of selling a thousand copies.
- tptacek 3y agoThe article doesn't say these books sell 2000 copies a year; it says they sell 2000 copies, period. Generously assume a $30 new release hardcover cost ("The City Is Up For Grabs", the most recent book I bought, cost $25) and a 20% gross margin for the publisher, and you're talking $35k total to split between the publisher and the author. It does talk about celebrity books selling some low number of copies within the year of publication. Presumably those books do keep selling at some level for some long tail of the book being in print. But unless books are utterly unlike all other media, 80-90% of the proceeds from selling the book will come during the new release window.
- paulpauper 3y agoAlso, the author conflates fiction with non-fiction. No kidding, if you include science books , guides, how-to books, etc. most books do not sell many copies, but they are not expected or intended to. It's not like the market for calculus books is that big. Fiction books by major publishing houses for a general audience still sell a lot.
- stubish 3y agoFiction only sells a lot if you hit the best seller lists. Most books do not, and it has been this way since at least 2000. For most fiction authors, you would make more money at a minimum wage job. You know, all the ones you haven't heard off because they didn't hit the best seller lists.
- ilamont 3y agoA big audience means publishing houses don’t have to spend money on marketing Only blockbuster authors get serious marketing support. For everyone else, big publishers want authors to shoulder marketing and publicity costs and responsibilities. Many lower tier authors are shocked to find they get zero marketing support: I’d hate for readers to think this happens to every author who signs with a traditional publisher. I have worked with several “Big 5” publishers, and never got even a hint of marketing. https://janefriedman.com/marketing-support-big-5/#comment-24272 https://janefriedman.com/marketing-support-big-5/#comment-24... Further, most authors are not experts in publicity or promotion, or have the expertise to run paid marketing campaigns. This goes a long way to explaining why many books published by the Big 5 sell so poorly.
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- karaterobot 3y agoCounterpoint: after taking a big hit during the pandemic years of 2020-2022, global book sales are climbing again. Sales are down compared to the years before 2019, but the trend recently has been positive, especially for audio and e-books. https://wordsrated.com/global-book-sales-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/global-book-sales-statistics/
- rossdavidh 3y agoAlmost everything this post describes is not new, not even 21st century new. E-books market share seems to be stuck at about 20% of the total market, where it's been since the early teens. The decline of the print book is more or less like the decline of vinyl albums, except that it never actually declined that much. However, a lot more people want to be a best-selling author, than there are spots available, so most books don't sell much, and there are lots more authors who cannot get any advance at all. It was ever thus.
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- AtlasBarfed 3y agoAlso: publishers aren't needed anymore They basically make money scumming celebrity crap on the market and riding the 150 years (and counting) copyright window. With AI floods the editors and reviewers do become more important. But like music labels, one of the biggest exploiters of art and talent, the technical aspects of media delivery and production aren't held by labels or publishing houses. They are just middlemen.
- chrsw 3y agoI buy books. I might buy more if more publishers offered titles with lay-flat binding. Computer/technical books especially.
- Tr4kt 3y agoI have too many books. I physically can't find more places for more books.
- pm90 3y agoTheres something rather magical about reading books. Or perhaps Im just an old fart that grew up without the internet. The article is fascinating but worrying. I do hope the industry survives in some form. I love the experience of reading books. It would be a shame if everything was digital although it seems like an inescapable conclusion after looking at the data in the article…
- droopyEyelids 3y agoReading, if you’re good at it, is the most sophisticated and powerful form of storytelling, allowing detail and scope far beyond movies or games. And writing is far more accessible and cheaper than any other form of media creation. I think thats the magic. But it has such a high requirement of education and practice, and demands such a high price in focus and attention. Its no wonder that it doesnt fit most people’s lives.
- stubish 3y agoNothing is going to go all digital, except maybe sales. Print-on-demand means that every ebook can also be a physical trade paperback, if the publisher chooses. Amazon even have a button you can click to give a free copy of the ebook to everyone who buys the printed version (not sure if this encourages printed sales, or more to expose people to the dark side).
- WalterBright 3y agoI've been buying scifi books from thrift stores for a decade or more. But in the last couple years, there's been a near complete collapse in it. The racks of scifi have abruptly dwindled to a handful of lonely books. The entire book section has dramatically shrunk as well. This is across thrift stores, not just one. Is it: 1. nobody buys physical books anymore 2. nobody donates physical books anymore 3. donations seem to be driven by estate sales. Maybe the book lovers have already all died out and their estates are liquidated I don't know. But I'm glad I bought the books when I could.
- techsupporter 3y ago> nobody donates physical books anymore It's partially number one but definitely this for me, insofar as thrift stores go. The two thrift stores around me that take books are Goodwill and the Salvation Army and I won't donate anything to them any more. My book donations go to the neighborhood independent bookstore for them to price and resell and keep their employees paid. The large chain bookstore near me still has several shelves of science fiction, new release and perennial favorites, so I think at least some are still being made and sold. Hopefully you can find what you seek.
- breezeTrowel 3y agoI think there's a fourth option - those little kiosks (like the Little Free Library ones) have started to spring up everywhere so it's a lot easier to just leave one's read books there.
- paulpauper 3y agoIn my essay “Writing books isn’t a good idea” I wrote that, in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe. yaawn..this useless stat again? The author erroneously mixes fiction with non-fiction. Of course, non-fiction from a boutique or niche publishing house will have smaller sales and thus depress the average. This includes such books as "trail guides in California" and so on, or science books. These non-fiction books are never expected to sell many copies and are marketed for a small or specific audience in mind, and there is minimal or no marketing push. So if you include these non-fiction books by tiny publishing houses, of course, most books sell few copies. Fiction books by major publishing houses marketed to a general audience and with a significant marketing push are expected to sell a lot of copies, and do. Hence the large advances commonly seen for authors who write these type of books.
- fsckboy 3y agothe stat is also leaving out an important part of the market, 10,000 books. (I think that's the size of a run of books; the actual number is not important, the vast range between 1000 and 100,000 is)
- sporadicallyjoe 3y agoeBay is hands down the best place to buy books. They're not new, but that's a feature not a bug. The books are more affordable, you're consuming sustainably, and who really cares if a book has been read before?
- NeilSmith2048 3y agoI love reading paper books, I rarely read e-books for the reason that paper books give me more focus!
- ryyr 3y agowhy should they? libraries, public domain e-books, great online second-hand book selection ...
- daly 3y agoI have about 6000 books, about 1000 of these are on Kindle. Of the 6000, most have bookmarks. I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them. I've finished a couple hundred so far. I found my old business cards make perfect bookmarks. I guess "No one buys books" isn't strictly true. I tried to write 4 books. I was told that I'd likely sell less that 1000. Beyond that would be considered a major win. I finished one, published it, and have made about $500. It took me months to write. I love books. I have a copy of "I, Robot" signed by Asimov. I really like books signed by authors.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoMy book took a year and a half to write and has made about $400 in direct royalties. I can't precisely quantify the return on investment, but I believe that having the ISBN on my resume has resulted in me getting more work opportunities and/or salary, so it's a pretty good investment. Also people think you're smart for having the stupidity to start writing a book without having the good sense to abandon the project halfway through.
- Tor3 3y agoI'm not sure I understand the "I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them". Did you somehow receive 6000 books in one huge batch and you're just checking them out, one by one? I mean, I've thousands of books in my collection (though I've had to dump a ton of them lately due to space restrictions.. that's sad), and I've read all of them end-to-end. If a book is so bad that I can't finish it.. it does happen with "free" Kindle books, but for my paper book collection I think there are maybe two or three I didn't read all through.
- Brajeshwar 3y agoI used to buy and read a lot of physical books. Around 2013-204, I started moving to eBooks, and Amazon Kindle played a significant role in my journey. But a couple of years later, I had an epiphany while discussing books with my daughter, “I never see you read books. You are just reading on your computer (kindle) or the phone and are not reading.” Since then, I have returned to reading physical books with an approximate ratio of 1:5 against digital ones. I have kinda rule/understanding with my daughters -- you have unlimited access to books that you can read, and you also get extra pocket money for reading them. Of course, it is OK not to finish a book, but in that case, a few cool-down days before buying another one. Yes, buy and read physical books. I believe, the return is a magnitude higher for everyone than the loss it does to anything. If you have kids, read more physical books in front of them. Encourage them to read physical books. They are less distracting and help the kids focus. Five years ago, I wrote a story about it. https://story.oinam.com/2018/why-physical-books-matter/ https://story.oinam.com/2018/why-physical-books-matter/
- kstrauser 3y ago> They are less distracting and help the kids focus. That’s such an incredibly personal preference though. It’s far easier for me to read with an ereader when I don’t have to have 2 hands holding a heavier hunk of paper wants to close itself if I let go for a moment. I have a huge book collection but I’ve switched almost entirely to ebooks because I find the ergonomics so much better. Physically fighting with dead tree media is more distracting than my ereader.
- The_Colonel 3y agoIt happened to me multiple times that I bought a real paper book, but the ergonomics was so bad, I've pirated the book and read it on my kindle instead (since I bought it I feel entitled to get the e-variant). Especially paperbacks are bad - tiny letters, yellow low-contrast paper, difficult to hold open. Reading good night stories to children is even more challenging, since it's usually dark. Bringing some extra light is annoying and distracting for the child.
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- hwbunny 3y agoFucking books are like museums. 100 year disadvantage.
- anileated 3y agoWhen you say “no one buys books” in the title, and then proceed to describe how big publishers don’t make a lot of money from books, you are engaging in disingenuous clickbait. There are small publishers. There are also print shops. You can design and sell a book yourself. I buy physical books. I bought Greg Egan’s self-published books. There does exist a real threat to the book market, and that’s LLMs, but as of 2024 the market is far from dead.
- hdivider 3y agoMain value prop of physical books for me: guaranteed zero interruptions from the book itself. Worst case, the pages stick together, or pages are missing, or damaged, or other very infrequent causes of distraction. All modern digital systems are by comparison, distraction machines. You never know when the next interruption ('notification') gets surfaced, the next update, the next forced restart, the next bug, the next battery problem, the next broken or lost charger cable. Physical books require light, the book, and your mind. All else fades away, and your mind is given free reign to ponder, to consider, to deliberate. No wonder civilization flourished whenever the physical written form was embraced at sustained scale.
- richrichie 3y ago> The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies. This distribution is pretty common in artistic professions and professional sport. A tiny fraction takes most of the pot. As they say around here, that's a feature and not a bug. In art, people tend to do stuff not because they are looking to earn an income, but they have something to prove or say or show.
- citizen_friend 3y agoI think at least half of the top level comments didn't read the article, and mistook it for an article about reading habits. It's actually about the number of books that sell well, not the number of readers.
- cm2012 3y ago319 comments and I don't see the simple fact that the article title is dead wrong. We are going through a massive book boom right now: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLSGuGOWoAArd-K.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLSGuGOWoAArd-K.jpg:large. Book sales are the highest they've been in 20 years lol. So all the comments mourning books can relax.
- shkkmo 3y agoThe title is provocative clickbait, but the actual point is this: > These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies). Given that spending per capita, adjusted for intlation is only a couple of percent higher than they were 20 years ago, the "boom" isn't particularly impressive.
- nottorp 3y agoNobody cries about the poor movie industry only making money from superhero movies, do they?
- ar_lan 3y ago> The title is provocative clickbait, but the actual point is this. It's an aside, but this is just so frustrating we have succumbed to this level. In principle I don't even want to read the article because the title is ridiculous, but on the other hand, they wouldn't generate any traffic if they don't because our brains are too fixated on "drama" and "controversy" that clickbait titles generate.
- CaptainFever 3y agoWe need DeArrow but for the Internet.
- outop 3y agoBut there are more books published than ever before. Most of the books that sell hundreds of copies wouldn't have been published in the past. If you write a niche book about something and a few hundred people read it, that seems great. If you're (stochastically) subsidized by a few huge hits and bestsellers, that also seems great. People are reading the Bible, Harry Potter and celebrity memoirs? Great too, I'm sure they are enjoying them. Possibly many of those people have not chosen those books in preference to other more "worthy" books but in preference to other pastimes. The only problem I can see is if you wrote a book and had it published hoping it would be this year's runaway success, and it wasn't. Fine, but someone's book was. By its nature not everyone can achieve this.
- grepLeigh 3y agoFrom the article: >>> "Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want?" I sincerely hope nothing "disrupts" public libraries in my lifetime. As a California resident, I can walk into ANY public library in the state and get a free library card with access to physical books, audiobooks, ebooks. Some branches have laptops, hotspots, tablets, e-readers available to borrow. My local branch even has a Makerspace with 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and other misc tools.
- mapt 3y agoIt might be great, but all the evidence says that we're not willing to nationalize the publishers in order to establish that deal as a durable offer, and that a private-sector publisher would change the terms of the deal the moment they'd gobbled up their competition, or perhaps even before. We would literally require that course of action from the corporate executives via the fiduciary duty. The cycle of enshittification consumes all.
- ellegriffin 3y agoI'm a big fan of the library, but that doesn't mean I can get access to every film that exists on Netflix. I check out a lot of books at the library, but I can't get access to all of the books I would like to access. Should a tech solution replace the library? No. But there should be another option than buying it from Amazon.
- THENATHE 3y agoThe only thing that kind of bothers me about libraries is that, as a tech focused individual, basically every book I read or whatever is either an ebook or a audiobook, and I don't want to have to go to the library to pick it out. I understand if I were getting physical books the need to go to a physical location to grab them, but if I'm getting something digital I don't want to have to go to the library. My library doesn't really offer an online catalog that you can just download from, only look at to see what you want to get in the library, and the free library services that they offer like the big ebook repositories don't have any books that I feel like I want to read, so it is just far easier to torrent things or have an audible subscription. Most libraries don't have really cool extra stuff like maker spaces or aquariums or anything remotely interesting other than books and maybe some computers for homeless people to use or whatever, so unless you're physically going there for a book, they're kind of pointless. I'm not saying I don't appreciate and respect libraries, but they really just didn't change with the times around where I am, and it makes them far more inconvenient to use for someone in my particular position than it does to make them convenient. I will still support them as a public access, and I think it would be tragic if they went away, but I wish they would spend a little bit more of whatever budget they get investing on making it. Not a terrible experience to get shit online.
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- p1dda 3y agoOur brains our overloaded with text these days with all the scrolling of news, email, texts and at work which mostly involves even more text. Reading a great book has great value, I think most people would agree, but to even get to the cognitive state where we could even consider doing this, we have to reduce our enormous load of text that is not work-related. I started doing this a few years back and I got back into reading in my spare time and I will never regret it.
- dsign 3y ago> 35 books out of 100 are profitable I don't think that's right. It's just too good. Imagine that you are an author and maybe you pay one line editor and get beta-readers for free, maybe you do your own cover, and you don't print a large batch of your book and because you are the author, you can't pay yourself an advance. That kind of resourcefulness that a trad publisher can't afford would allow that same 35/100, maybe a little higher, or maybe a little lower, depending on how you do with self-promotion. Still, it means that if you are not a terrible writer, or one who consistently writes stuff nobody wants to read, you will make money with one book out of three. Which I think is too good.
- stubish 3y agoI'm pretty sure that means 35% of books covered their advance (ie. authors actually started getting paid royalties). I think it is still about $1 per full price paperback (physical or ebook).
- r0s 3y ago> Is anyone else alarmed that the top tier is book sales of 75,000 units and up? One post on Substack could get more views than that….. I guarantee any book-length post on substack will get substantially LESS views than that. This person discovered what any aspiring writer who cares already knows: Publishing like music runs on proven revenue generating content and gambles on the next big hit. Same as it ever was, and Amazon changes nothing about that fact. Maybe publishing consolidates and changes, companies boom or bust but the business itself has always been like this.
- fifticon 3y agoisnt there a logical twist in all this.. The problem is that there are so many _different_ books. I have a house not exactly filled, but certainly loaded with books. So people certainly buy books. But of each book, I seldomly have more than one or two. It's a bit like random numbers filling the interval 0-1. each number has 0 probability, but they fill out the infinite space 0-1 fully. But how horrible it would be to only have the 10 best selling books. The bible, anyone..
- emodendroket 3y agoIs there? Lots of people read books digitally. I am sure more than 50 musical artists reached more than half a million people.
- emodendroket 3y ago> I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies). I know this is in some way an irritating thing to say, but this is exactly what I would have guessed before I read the article. It's cool to see numbers put to it but I don't think this was a secret. I am struck by the coda where the antitrust intervention did nothing to preserve a healthy market. Kind of a common story.
- outop 3y agoHow is this an unhealthy market? Everyone can easily access the books they want. People choose to read the Bible and Harry Potter because that's what they want to read. Of course, it might be a shame that we all coordinate on reading a few hits that everyone else is reading rather than check out some underappreciated books. But is the market really to blame for that? Amazon makes it easier than ever to find all the books. Publishers, as pointed out in the quote, are publishing tons of books that don't make it, in part because of a belief that it's a good thing to do. It's easier to self publish than ever before. And social media is often playing a big role in discovering the huge hits that everyone else is reading - many are not the books pushed by the marketing machine, but word-of-mouth successes that get discovered and shared by a huge group of dedicated, articulate readers. If there were hardly any books selling 3-digit numbers, that to me would suggest an unhealthy market. The presence of lots and lots selling that many seems very positive.
- dingaling 3y ago> Everyone can easily access the books they want. Not particularly. New niche-interest non-fiction books are expensive ( $60+ ) and tend to have short print runs, after which their price on the second-hand market quickly escalates. And few are available as ebooks. I've had to let a lot of books pass me by, even before they've been printed, simply because I couldn't afford them.
- kilburn 3y agoIncidentally, today is the day of the books and roses [1] in Catalonia. If you are ever planning on visiting Barcelona I promise you won't regret it if you can arrange it so you are there on Apr 23rd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_Books_and_Roses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_Books_and_Roses
- Aeolun 3y ago> Penguin Random House owns Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar intellectual property. The book has been on Publisher Weekly’s bestseller list every week for 19 years. This is insane. To be fair, it’s a fun book. But 19 years?!
- YossarianFrPrez 3y agoI love reading books, and I write: I've had essays published in various internet corners, and I'm working on a humble little book of my own. Few who write do so for the money, and like most things, the Pareto Principle applies. That being said, another commenter has pointed out that book sales data suggests we are actually in a book boom. Also, publishers are absolutely in it for the money. But the quotes and analysis of this article suggest that publishing houses are too big and a victim of their own size. It seems like they can't "run lean" and are big enough that they are trying to find books that can sell millions of copies. Other questions I had while reading the article: - Is there any Hollywood accounting in the book industry? - Do writer's advances still make sense? What if advances were smaller but royalties are bigger? - These companies are looking for books that can sell millions of copies, but they could also a) raise the price, or b) have supplemental products + content for avid readers and fans.
- vunderba 3y agoFrom the article: "The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles" Well that was a depressing read (no pun intended).
- peter_d_sherman 3y agoThis is by far the best article that I've ever read about the business aspects of the book publishing industry...
- keiferski 3y agoBooks are functionally a type of merch (low end) or art object (high end) at this point. The companies that sell the most understand this, whereas those that adhere to the old model of focusing on the words/information inside are struggling. For example: celebrity books like David Goggins’ sell extremely well at a lower price point. At the other end, Taschen, who makes expensive art books and partners with celebrities often, also does well.
- bowsamic 3y agoHere in Germany it seems like people buy a lot of books. Actually people make fun of me for having an ebook reader
- ddingus 3y agoI buy books of all kinds. Paperback, hard cover, audio (rarely), e-book prefer non DRM. In fact, the number of books I buy has not really changed much. I just end up reading more books! People trade or loan me books. I get electronic ones via many means too. Many people I know buy books. Who does not buy books?
- Maro 3y agoI buy tons of print books on Amazon, probably around 20-30 per year.
- voidUpdate 3y agoFake news, I bought a book just last week
- watersb 3y agoI have started to buy some technical books again, because the ebook version requires some insane locked down proprietary application to read, or causes the book to self destruct after a few months... No. I prefer ebooks for many reasons, and I have purchased thousands of them over the past two decades. Sometimes a printed book is better for dense technical material. But I'm starting to see textbooks that seem to have been designed as web pages: large x-height, clumsy justification and hyphenation. No proprietary apps to read a book, please.
- chromanoid 3y agoI would assume that the lack of sales publishers see is directly related to self-publishing and web novels success. Nice numbers from a self-published LitRPG success: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1c2a3x4/financial_superiority_a_rramazons_authors_pov/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1c2a3x4... Other authors and people on Kindle Unlimited: https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/15o4f5d/ku_payouts_for_litrpg_am_i_wrong_totally_worth_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/litrpg/comments/15o4f5d/ku_payouts_...
- TOMDM 3y agoMy favourite web novel author is currently making around half a million a year on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/Sleyca https://www.patreon.com/Sleyca Really happy for them, the story is great.
- vidarh 3y agoI would not. There's not much indication that this curve and the dominance of a small number of top sellers is a new thing.
- chromanoid 3y agoI think most cultural goods compete in hit-driven markets. That is a given. But as far as I understood the article claims the downfall of books in general. And that is not true, in my opinion at least. Books are bought as web novel or viewed on Kindle Unlimited or in general as self-published endeavors. And as the link in my post states, KU pays good, Patreon works as well. There also emerge more and more paid and sponsored newsletters etc. All completely independent to classical publishing channels.
- vidarh 3y ago> Books are bought as web novel or viewed on Kindle Unlimited or in general as self-published endeavors. I've seen no data to suggest this is true at least in the sense it's some sort of major revenue shift. "Traditional" - so non-web novel - type e-books make up about 20% of sales of traditional books, and this has been very slow to change in recent years. As far as I can tell - and this might well be way off, so I'm happy to see better numbers, the web novel market might maybe be somewhere between 3%-5% of the size of the traditional book market. Both likely can make up substantially more of indie authors earnings - it's certainly far easier for me to sell to Kindle users than getting my books into bookstores, and so paper sales largely come from Amazon too. The webnovel market is really hard to justify spending time on unless you write in a very specific set of genres, and is prepared to death-march until you get traction. That's fine - some people want to do that. But KU etc. does not pay well either for most. They pay well for a similarly minuscule fraction of writers, and next to nothing for most. For my part, I'm considering pulling my stuff from there, as it prevents you from putting up your ebooks elsewhere. This isn't really surprising, sure - it's a market where it's now trivial to enter but still hard to get both good and find a product market fit. So you have a flood of people churning out vast volumes, most of which isn't very good, some of which is good but just up against a deluge of amazing work. I don't know about the US, but I know there was a survey in the UK a couple of years back that showed that in the UK the average full-time writer, irrespective of platform, earns well below minimum wage, and the vast majority of writers are not full-time. Most full-time writers in the UK at least depend on the income of a partner to be able to afford to write full-time. And that average is pulled significantly up by the top end of the market. Some people do better on KU or serialized venues than traditional books, sure. With respect to the click-bait headline, it's not so much that all that much has changed, but that this is the most we've seen the publishing industry numbers laid bare. And "no one" really do buy books in the sense that reading "books" be they traditional, or webnovel.com or other serial formats, is something most people just don't do very often.
- hyperman1 3y agoI read this and think about Sanglard's book: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ He has 0.77 dollar profit on an 51 dollar book. A minimal campaign with some organisational backing on HN alone should be able to get 1000 books sold, no? Every programmer who lived trough the doom craze is interested. It would place him above the average number of books sold.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoJust to refute the title: I've sold a dozen of my textbooks in the last two weeks. I bought them almost fifty years ago for my applied physics degree. So some people are buying some books. But yes of course no one buys most of the books that are published, I don't suppose that Lorrain and Corson sold more than a few thousand copies of Electromagnetic fields and waves (one of the books I sold) and I doubt that they made enough money to pay for the work it must have cost them. It must be even worse for academic textbook authors nor that many university courses don't even use textbooks any more because they have switched to modular online instruction.
- tomgp 3y agoOK, I haven't read the whole thing yet but this bit raised an eyebrow... >These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: _publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies)._ Why do we view this as a vanity project and not the purpose of the whole endeavour? The celebrity books are just to raw material that allow them to dot heir real job; to make books those fragments of human connection widely available to the people who might need them, a service to readers and to future generations that isn't just about making money.
- bzhang255 3y agoI read that line as sardonic. The author is pointing out how the economics of publishing are contrary to what we would expect, or perhaps would like.
- poulpy123 3y agoI buy books but I don't read them anymore....
- theshrike79 3y agoFor "linear fiction"[0] I use an e-ink reader exclusively. I also re-read books pretty much never. There are way too many excellent books I haven't read yet, so why would I spend time redoing something I have already experienced? I can easily hi-light stuff on the Kindle and check them out from Goodreads if I need to later. For books I read for work and other knowledge stuff it's either PDF on an iPad or a web page. In some rare cases a physical book, but stuff tends to move so fast paper reference books expire too fast to have any advantage compared to asking a large language model. If I get the urge to make any notes from this category, they go into Obsidian. [0] Books that are read from beginning to end with no need to jump around to check stuff you read before. Could be a biography too, which isn't fiction per se.
- nikolayasdf123 3y agoI do
- janandonly 3y agoI'm currently writing a book about the What? How? & Why? of Bitcoin. For me, the gain and street cred I will receive from having completed a book is invaluable to me personally. I'm writing this book in Dutch, so I really don't expect any sales. Okay, maybe a few if there was another bull-run and frenzy, but that's not why I am writing this book.
- ulfw 3y agoSo where is that "Street cred" going to come from when no one knows you have a book because no one bought it?
- gverrilla 3y ago> So where is that "Street cred" going to come from I suppose it is constituted by the same substance found in books that people buy, never read, and proudly display nevertheless.
- cafard 3y agoNo one bought books. If one can believe Edward Dahberg, the first run of Thus Spake Zarathusra sold ten copies, the first run of Stendhal's On Love, seventeen copies. That considered, Thoreau selling just more than 200 of the first printing of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers appears as a raging success--but he had many literate friends. Simon Leys, in the essay "Readers' Rewards and Writers' Rewards", quotes the French writer, and sometime publisher, Jacques Chardonne as saying that "Any good book will find 3,000 readers, no more no less." Leys goes on to say the number hasn't varied significantly in last 400 years. (Collected in The Hall of Uselessness)
- bradley13 3y agoWriting is art, just like painting, acting, playing an instrument, etc.. Great hobby. Don't expect to make it a profession. There's a truth behind the phrase "starving artist". Lottery winners are famous. It's easy to forget that most lottery tickets don't win.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoThere is a steady stream of tech books being published. Does anyone know what sort of advance a tech author can get, if we leave out the biggest author.
- imetatroll 3y agoI just am old school because I will ALWAYS prefer printed material over digital. I dread the day that physical goods finally vanish.
- ahussain 3y agoOne advantage of published books is that they have been through an editorial process, and so are guaranteed to be good (on some dimensions). Once publishing dies, who will set the quality bar? University presses? Stripe press?
- nemo44x 3y agoBooks are, in many cases anyways, an outdated medium. Or at best, a medium that has fierce competition from many other mediums that did not exist for the majority of time the printing press has been around. There's just so many ways to consume fiction today and the barrier to entry is essentially 0. Literature still has its place but that has always been a very small place for the highly intellectual - a limiting factor on its own. Similarly for non-fiction, there's just so much competition from other mediums that frankly, people tend to prefer over books. People who love reading (I count myself here) will continue to and books will be viable to them. But the vast majority of people only ever read because there wasn't an alternative.
- fumeux_fume 3y agoIf the title is the conclusion you're reaching after reading all the testimony (or whatever it is) then you're probably the kind of person who never buys books. Other than the heavy hitters and back catalogs, there are too many other books for there not to be a long, sparse tail of sales.
- Deforest7551 3y agoBecause of libraries?
- beezle 3y agoInteresting article. I have a book still in print, very niche subject. First released in 2013, Amazon mysteriously stoppped stocking it last May, even with recent annual sales of 150-250/yr. Life time print sales are over 1,300 with close to an additional 500 in digital copies. Hardly a life changer but I've managed to keep the bottom line compensation to $6 per copy, give or take, the entire time so dinner money ;)
- EchoReflection 3y agoI buy used books all the time, sometimes several per month. And I pre-ordered a new book for which I am pretty excited. "Speaking"in universals (the irony of this statement is not lost on me) is unwise.
- HPsquared 3y agoAnd most books that are bought, aren't read.
- veunes 3y agoI can't imagine how I would write essays for university without our library
- beryilma 3y agoBeing mostly into technical books and textbooks, I WOULD BUY BOOKS if the publishers didn't goddamn charge $300 for an undergrad textbook. I have no love for textbook publishers AND authors. They could all crash and burn for all I care. The best real analysis textbook I've seen recently by Jay Cummings sells on Amazon for $16. So it is possible to (self)publish books that people can and would buy. Granted that the author probably doesn't live on this book's income, it points out that more affordable solutions can at least exist.
- noashavit 3y agoIn SF libraries are mostly used for clean air during the fire season. Sad but true
- yunwal 3y agoI think novels also suffer from a lack of independent tastemakers. Book stores all went out of business, and none of the publishing houses have an identity beyond publishing what sells. I can't think of any book review blogs that have loyal followings, so you end up with the only exposure being pay-for-play. It's really difficult to discover new authors that I like with the current systems.
- lolive 3y agoI consume a LOT of comics on bittorrent, read them then buy expensive physical editions of the ones i like. That is VERY bad for my wallet (:i consume comics a lot), but it is always a sure shot when going to the comics store. I consider that to be a win-win situation.
- whyage 3y agoInteresting analysis, but it misses one group of authors: those who write books for fun, not profit. Writing is an effective way to convey your thoughts and ideas. Writing a book has the added benefit of forcing you to plan, prioritize, and edit at a much larger scale. With it comes a greater feeling of achievement. Selling a few copies is a nice cherry on top.
- blinded 3y agoI buy books still. Really enjoy that over looking at a screen all evening too.