Not yet, but in another decade, I think we will be.
Why? Because of revolutions in the way we handle data, including e-books and our sales techniques.
Let’s start with the controversial part: we all know that the e-book devices on the market aren’t as good as printed books. (Let’s call the printed books p-books, shall we?) But in another few years, they may well be. And e-books have obvious advantages in weight and volume, in convenience of purchasing books, and in cost.
Some market segments are very price sensitive and very sensitive to convenience. If a significant fraction of the readers for a given segment switch to e-books, the rising price of the remaining p-books will push the remaining readers ever faster in the same direction.
So, if some formats just stop being offered in some market segments, or even in many of them, what happens to bookstores? To wholesalers? To distributors?
No one in the book business has much margin to spare right now. We need to figure out what the changes might be, and have plans ready to implement when we see the cascade start, or we risk being caught very short.
When p-books aren’t purchased as often, what will bookstores have to offer? Can gift books, art books, and other premium forms of books sustain bookstores? Or will they need to offer more sidelines? And e-book readers? And more book-related programming, making them a shopping destination?
Some of them, of course, will look at challenging Amazon’s primacy. That’s going to be a very hard slog for obvious reasons, but it could be done if the new stores offer some sort of community experience or added value that Amazon’s site isn’t delivering.
Wholesalers and distributors are necessary now because of the numbers of small bookstores and small presses, and because of the volume of business done by the indies.
They can aggregate the orders and build enough volume to make large fixed investments in handling books and orders more efficiently. But when the volume of p-books being shipped drops, especially when the indie publishers surge into the e-book arena by preference because of the lower barriers to entry, then a big part of their role disappears.
Will the efficiencies of wholesalers and distributors order processing, credit and collection, and payment systems be enough to earn them a reasonable place in the supply chain? Or will they need another role?
As it becomes less and less possible to have sales reps showing all the new books to all the bookstore buyers, is there a place for an automated system that integrates Bookscan-type data, bookstore buyers’ feedback, and publishers’ catalog data to produce useful ordering recommendations? Could this turn into a wholesale version of Amazon.com?
Is there a role for such a system in the e-book world? Probably not. There may well be a role for retailers, but I’m not sure that I see a near-term need for another layer of intermediaries. But p-books might well be a profitable niche for wholesalers that can add this kind of value-added service.
If you’re a bookseller, I’d like to hear whether you see an advantage to you in such a system? And how you are preparing for the future.
If you’re in wholesale or distribution, what do you think of the above?
And if you’re in publishing, how do you see the future of the books you’re making? Will p-books ever lose market share to e-books?
Am I completely out to lunch?
I agree that eventually, E-books will be the dominant means people get their books. However, I think it will be another generation before ebooks replace p-books. The current e-book technology is a barrior (I hate reading books on a screen) but we all know technology improves with time. And people love the feel and smell of books (I’m one of those!). Wandering around a bookstore, examining books, flipping through the pages, is a very appealing way to spend an afternoon and not one I think people will give up quickly. However, children today and future generations spend more and more time on computers, staring at screens, googling info and reading blogs. They are losing the p-book habit and eventually spending an afternoon at a p-bookstore will seem “quant,” but impractical. Improved technology and ease of searching within the text will lure people away from p-books. Plus, think of all the trees we’ll save!
Thanks for commenting! I certainly agree that today’s computer screens just aren’t there yet. I haven’t received my Kindle yet, but I’ll post about it when I do.
I’m guessing that when the ebook readers evolve to the 300 dpi+ range, and lose the glare-factor, that they’ll be as easy to read as books. A screen the size of a paperback, and at least as lightweight, with resolution matching it, etc? That might catch on.
Will that take a generation? I’m guessing that it will be less than 10 years. I’ve seen announcements of E-Ink screens at 600 dpi. Expensive still, but we all know how that goes.
Marion,
The changes are already happening. Over the last month, we have uploaded Kindle editions of all five of our fiction titles and are trying to decide how best, or even if, to do the same with our nonfiction titles (there’s an issue with photos and graphics there).
I wish I could use a Kindle, but we don’t have wireless broadband out in the sticks where I live. I’ll be eager to hear what you have to say about it.
I can see a Kindle for fiction but it just won’t provide the same utility as a p-book for nonfiction. Frequently, I wrestle with a problem or sit trying to recall something important, take a glance at my bookshelf (right beside me as I work) and a book figuratively jumps off the shelf at me. Right! Felici discussed that issue in his book. Or Poynter had some excellent thoughts about that.
I can’t do that kind of free association between my problem and the books on an e-book reader. I’d have to do a search, which presumes two things: the book I really need is loaded on it and I know exactly what I want to know. Many times, I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for but a scan of the reference books on my shelf sets me off on a track I hadn’t considered but that proves more useful than just searching for what I thought I needed.
Of course, I would also prefer to browse a paper catalog than an online one. I can almost always find what I want in the Penny-Wise or U-Line p-catalog before I can even navigate to their websites.
Thanks for the thought, Walt. I agree that physical rather than electronic books will continue to be best for some usages, and for some folks.
The kind of change I’m discussing doesn’t require that all, or even most titles be sold exclusively as e-books, only that there be enough of a shift within certain formats or market segments to change the economies of scale.
I also agree that visual free association is useful. I ‘spect that there will be something of the sort available for your e-shelf before long, though.
I think that the development of good e-book reader technology is not the only issue. The development of good copyright protection via both DRM and legal procedures is essential for publishers and authors to make a profit from e-books (that is, to prevent so many free, pirated copies from circulating that sales are gutted). I believe there is so much competition for ad sales, in these days when every individual and business with a website can sell ads and many try, that ad sales are unlikely to support the costs of publishing most books. Their revenues certainly do not meet the expectations of many owners of small websites. But even if ads can support e-books, control of distribution of the files is still necessary to sell the books (and make sure the ads are not stripped out by pirates).
I also expect better and cheaper print-on-demand technology to be developed within the next few years. This would considerably reduce publishers’ risks guessing on print size, and save much warehouse rent, reducing the need to publish e-books to solve those problems. In fact, POD is what I expect to become the dominant publishing form within a decade.
The prevalence of deeply discounted books on Amazon and other online bookstores has significantly reduced the costs of books for consumers (but has also reduced their perception of the value of books). As for Amazon’s primacy, a number of online bookstores are trying to challenge it already, and have been for years.
I doubt that micropress books (and their small budgets for printing) are ever going to drive the publisher and reader markets to e-books or anything else. Certainly not any time soon. They just don’t have enough clout in the industry.
My theory is that e-books will become another, cheaper layer of production, for (a) micropresses who can’t afford a printer (b) megapresses who expect huge sales of a book and plan to charge less for e-books and make it up in volume (but note that today’s cover prices for such books, now published as mass-market paperbacks, are already quite affordable) and (c) promotional freebies; that is initial free chapters of books to promote the book, or a freebie of one book in a series to promote the series, or freebies of backlist books that have mostly exhausted their sales to promote the publisher’s whole line.
As for the advantages of e-books, note that much of the currently middle-aged generation has already worked on a screen all day for many years–it’s not a new experience. But sadly, the average person does not buy hundreds or even dozens of books a year, so the advantages of storage apply mostly to a comparatively small number of avid readers. Most people other than students do not carry around more than one commercially published book at a time (if any; I am not speaking of workplace reports and the like), so I see e-readers as possibly becoming a device targeted more to students than most other people.
If e-books do become the dominant publishing form (though as I’ve said, I expect them to merely become an additional layer), I see little need in the market for not only wholesalers, but for brick-and-mortar bookstores, and for brick-and-mortar libraries.
What a coincidence, Marion. I just sent a post to BookFutures (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bookfutures/) on the issue of distribution. Please take a look at let me know what you think.
As I said there, I do see some kind of role for a middleman or registry — simply for logistical reasons. How will booksellers and publishers find each other without something in this role?
You wrote:
“Wholesalers and distributors are necessary now because of the
numbers of small bookstores and small presses, and because of
the volume of business done by the indies.”
Since e-books actually lower the barriers to entry, they will tend to increase the number of small bookstores and small presses, so I have to believe that wholesalers will continue to be needed. This is also true when you add the complexities of whatever equivalent of DRM exists in the long run (i.e., the fixed version that I believe is inevitable). Small publishers will need a wholesaler or distributor to take care of the technical end of offering this DRM equivalent and the ever-changing list of formats.
You later wrote:
“As it becomes less and less possible to have sales reps showing
all the new books to all the bookstore buyers, is there a place
for an automated system that integrates Bookscan-type data,
bookstore buyers’ feedback, and publishers’ catalog data to
produce useful ordering recommendations?”
This is a very interesting idea. I think something like this was envisioned in the creation of the onix format, which provided for exchanging book review and other title-related information.
One of my problems with onix is that it is very oriented towards providers charging substantial amounts for the information, and small players are essentially cut out at the moment because the information is overpriced.
I’d love to see something done with this.
I should add, that I think for a new technology to catch on it has to solve an important problem, or a number of them. But it may not catch on if those problems turn out to be solvable in other ways.
The problems I see for readers are, they now want information very cheap or free, and they expect e-books to be cheap or free because the only publisher cost they really count is printing. On the other hand, this poses a new problem for publishers needing to make a profit. I do not think the average person buys either so many print books, or such expensive books, that paying print book prices is a problem (and there’s always the library). I think it’s just because the net has trained people to think that publications in e-form are usually free and should be.
I fully expect e-books to become the predominant production method for hobbyist publishing. But that may reduce the perception of e-book quality as a whole, fairly or not; just as micropress print books are now all lumped into the same category of amateurism, even though this is unfair. So many books are published that major wholesalers and reviewers are looking for categories to exclude from consideration: E-books could become one of them. BTW, I do not expect that the need for reviews will go away.
E-books are easier to store; but my question is, is this a problem for anyone but avid readers?
An e-book reader may be easy to carry around. But so are many paperbacks. And paperbacks are less likely to be stolen, and cost little to replace if they are lost.
E-books are text-searchable, but that is important only for certain kinds of books. They are also much harder to flip through, which is also a kind of search readers use.
E-books could incorporate sound and “movies”–but that would mean higher production costs for publishers.
The production problems I see for publishers are first, the cost of print runs. If POD becomes comparable in quality and price to offset printing, publishers will not pay any less to print the copies that are sold–but, they will send far fewer to the remainder table. Then there is the cost of warehousing. POD would reduce that considerably.
Effective marketing is always a problem for publishers, but I don’t see that e-books reduce that problem. It may increase marketing problems, as it seems clear that the existence of cheap production methods attracts more hobbyist publishers and therefore the publication of more books. It already seems as though everyone has a book inside them–even when it should stay there.
Hi, Marion,
The future you describe seems accurate for the trade, but in academic and college textbook publishing, the future is already here. Electronic delivery of scholarly works and course materials is becoming the norm, in both commercial publishing and the open access movement. Academic libraries, universities, and other institutions increasingly subscribe to, license, or share digitized course content, databases, and journals. Publishers are even offering chapter by chapter downloads of textbooks and study guides through direct sales to students on their corporate web sites. And then there is the wiki-textbook phenomenon! I think electronic delivery can involve models other than (or in addition to) e-books and e-book readers, and I think education will feel the impact of this trend before it significantly affects the trade book publishing industry. BTW I talk about this and other trends affecting academic publishing in my blog on my web site (atlanticpathpublishing.com)
In the next decade or so, I can imagine bookstores becoming “print depots”, where they tap into a huge database of POD books (which will be ALL books, eventually), and print them for the consumer. “We don’t have that title in stock, sir, but if you’d like to enjoy a cup of coffee, we’ll have that book ready for you in 15 minutes.”
In other words, every mall could have a small store with the same digital inventory as Amazon, and print books as quickly as you can order a sandwich, using something like the Espresso digital press that was launched last year.
I’m convinced, though, that eventually books will follow music, and everyone will be reading ebooks. How long that will take, though, I’m just not sure!
Chain bookstores are looking more and more like plus-size versions of the airport bookstall. Sure, if you just want something to read, you’ll find SOMETHING in there. But if you know what you want, you go to the library or buy online.
Having observed the arguments on this for some years [and taken part here and there] I am less convinced that there is going to be a replacement of pbooks by ebooks. The ebook area will undoubtedly grow, but it is dependent on equipment [computer or dedicated reader or mixed device] and the energy to run it – with associated costs.
This has many ramifications which will be puzzled out over the years ahead, but will mostly leave the ebook area as mostly a by-product of the pbook.
But the pbook will also go through changes, of which PoD and individual print [as described by Frances Grimble above] will enable more titles, lowered cost of production and an increase in the number of new titles. At the same time the actual use of trees will probably fall – a handy environmental prospect.
But the basic fact is that most people have either never bought pbooks, or bought very few. An important part of the ebook expansion comes from either new readership, or a new quiver for the avid reader’s bow. And a deal of ebook readership and sales facts depend on what is included and excluded as an ebook.
And it is also worth asking whether we are being western-centric, since new opportunities to find the money to buy books is coming to around half the world’s population, if the economic climate remains favourable.
So my summary is, it is growth all around, with a few puzzles for publishers and authors about their incomes as emphases change.
A serious point to ponder is whether books will continue to be perceived as books once the delivery method and medium changes. How do you distinguish between a free web site and a fee-for-service e-book in the eye of the end user? How do you distinguish between books, magazines, and newspapers (no less music, movies, and television) when they’re all delivered in the same, non-physical package, and viewed/heard on the same e-readers? No matter what the medium, the professional media have a lot of work ahead of us to justify any kind of pay-for-use model. We’re all competing with the free Internet.
I can see e-books moving to a mixture of advertising support, subscription, and “newsstand” (pay-per-download) sales, just like newspapers and magazines. The only line separating e-books from e-periodicals is length and perhaps, price – all can be updated at will. The number of publishers competing for the audience will grow substantially.
Few books currently carry advertising, yet that may become more feasible and inevitable in this environment – with online e-readers like Kindle, up-to-date advertising insertions are very easy. Books actually have an advantage over music and movies delivered in this fashion, as the ads wouldn’t have to interrupt the show. (Even so, I wouldn’t be surprised if ads would be triggered to pop up whenever someone clicked “pause” on a movie, music, or podcast download.) Hence, there’s a new revenue stream in our future.
With or without advertising support, I expect there will be a mixture of monthly subscriptions and per-download sales, as we already are seeing in music downloads (we’ve been doing this at PassPorter for the past year, and it has been working very well). Monthly subscriptions might be offered by “retail” web sites like iTunes, or by rejuvenated book clubs, or by publishers with strong brands/imprints – anybody in a position to aggregate media that would be of special interest to a target audience. When a particularly desirable title is not covered by a reader’s subscription service, it’ll go as a per-download sale.
What useful service can a bookstore provide if the majority of its goods are, essentially, catalog items? It reminds me of Sears Roebuck in the old days. Small towns might have had a Sears catalog store, with just a smattering of merchandise. The variety and quantity of stock on hand and size of the store expanded with the size of the community. Clearly, there was (and is) an advantage to having physical stock on hand, both for customer inspection and for instant gratification. However, whither (or wither) the bookstore if there’s little physical stock on hand because the majority of the stock is a stream of electrons? The customers may as well stay home and peruse the catalog, since they’ll get instant gratification downloads without venturing to the strip mall. While some may look to memory chips to provide the “physical” product, I think it’s a hard sell when the consumer has a choice between an easily-lost chip and an archivable download.
Still, the brick and mortar retailers will strive to hang on. However, when your business is dependent on retail leaseholds, sometimes the choice is to move into a line of merchandise that can better take advantage of those assets, or to transfer those leases to the highest bidder. If “Location, Location, Location” is no longer important to booksellers, then those locations will find a better use.
I suspect that brick and mortar booksellers will put pressure on publishers to supply goods that cannot be delivered electronically, in order to maintain their distinct place in the market. However, I don’t know whether that’ll be enough to support the current square footage at a B&N Superstore.
Distributors? I consider my distributor to be first and foremost a marketing parther, with a field sales and marketing team that normally only the largest publishers can field. There’s certainly room for sales and marketing in the future, but since a non-physical product probably won’t do well in brick and mortar stores, the marketing effort will switch to the online delivery vendors. Fulfillment services will probably consolidate as the available physical stock dwindles. “Everything has a SKU” is already a well-known phrase in retailing, and I suspect book SKUs will end up in the same distribution warehouses as tomato soup SKUs.
In the electronic media, distributors are usually called Syndicators. Their job in this brave, new, world will be to find all the various online venues that might be suitable for a title, and to maximize revenues during a book release. They might also be responsible for creating e-publishing “bundles,” such as releasing the e-book with the DVD of the movie. Syndicators have a habit of producing tiered roll-outs, much like movies today – initial release in theaters, followed by on-demand cable, premium cable services, network TV, DVD rentals and sales, ad. inf. I can see the same thing happening for heavily anticipated e-book titles. Exclusive availability at the publisher’s site for the first two weeks, then availability in the top-tier download retailers (iTunes, Amazon, etc.), and so on. Syndicators will have the content management infrastructure to control retailer access to a file, and circulate the necessary supporting files (catalog data, publisher’s description, reviews, “cover” images, promo copy, etc.).
The struggle will, as always, to obtain special visibility for titles. While the “long tail” becomes even longer, and the “level playing field” will be flatter than ever, the customer will always be looking for shortcuts to the “best” and most heavily promoted/advertised, and the sites will have to distinguish themselves on quality of advice/search results/exclusive content, etc., even moreso than today’s brick and mortar stores.
Branding becomes even more important in this arena, because search engines have a way of flattening more subtle distinctions (like word-of-mouth reputations). Don’t be surprised if publishers/imprints start to spend more time promoting their brand identity and less time promoting individual titles. With brand loyalty comes a greater power to control who markets your goods, how much consumers will pay for them, and affords a greater opportunity for selling subscriptions to branded series/imprints.
The major media companies will still have a distinct advantage over the small indies when it comes to marketing and promotion, and in a world where everyman can be a publisher, you can bet they’ll do what they can to bury the no-name brands.
Multiple points-of-presence will continue to be critical to market saturation, but those points of presence will be online. The music download services, the movie download services, the newspaper web sites… anybody capable of serving-up files will be ready and willing to sell e-books, too. Amazon will naturally be in the game, but they are not as dominant in the world of downloadables as they are in the world of delivering physical goods.
Interesting ideas, Marion. There are massive changes happening in how information is disseminated and (although it will not happen overnight) there will be much bigger issues to deal with than just the important ones you raise here.
Not only are people (especially younger people) used to spending a lot of time with screens, they are accustomed to getting information in “byte-size” pieces, such as with text messaging and Twitter. And information is becoming more collaborative with sites such as Wikipedia.
Will “books” of any kind, p- or e-, be around in 100 years? 50 years? One of the goals expressed by the people at Google is to make all of the world’s information accessible. There may not be a need for information to be collected in one specific place if the collective knowledge is available to be searched instantly.
What about fiction? Perhaps the novel as we know it will disappear, to be replaced by ongoing collaborations where everyone can be a part of telling the story.
Of course, it is possible that great writing will always be respected and novels will be available in some format for many millennia. But I believe we have to accept that there will be massive changes in how people access information and entertainment. Even better, we should embrace change for the possibilities it offers.
If we small publishers are open to new ideas, we can create opportunities while the giants are holding meetings and trying to figure out what is happening. The Internet (and companies such as Amazon.com) have leveled the playing field in many ways. New technologies will help the “little guy” even more in the future.
Cathy Stucker
Special Interests Publishing
I don’t see that e-delivery would necessarily change the typical kind of content delivered. A website, for example, is usually far more like a magazine than a book in terms of its total size and the lengths of the individual works it delivers. There will always be a need for novel-length fiction, and for book-length nonfiction. There just simply are things you can say in several hundred pages that you cannot say in ten, and things one expert can do that an ad-hoc amateur committee cannot.
As for “collaborative stories”–I’ve actually seen this done a number of times on writers’ groups. It always turns into a game, where each person tries to get the protagonist into increasingly absurd situations that are increasingly hard for the next writer to get the protagonist out of. Likewise, every writer tries to totally change the setting. It’s very funny, but it’s a terrible way to tell a real story.
But, since many people are unanalytical about the value of the free content of the net, seeing the good as much the same as the bad, I think it is important for publishers–regardless of whether they publish e-books or print books–to educate the public as much and as often as possible about the value of works that are professionally researched, written, edited, designed, indexed, etc. In other words, to have a marketing stance of “you get what you pay for”; that amateur freebies are generally free for a good reason, but that professional works are charged for because they are well worth the money.
I think your predictions are pretty accurate. Your time frame may be off, as the Boomer generation will be kicking around for another 40-50 years (and our parents for 20-30), we tend to be pretty good in the disposable income department, and we’re not going to let go of our p-books until you pry them from our cold, dead hands.
Thank you all for a wonderful, substantive discussion. So many great takes on the topic.
For those of you who raised the topic of POD — I agree that it’s a great technology, but I don’t agree that it will drop the cost of putting a p-book into the hands of a reader. There are, I think, going to be economies of scale in printing books for a good long time.
Syndicators, or electronic distributors, who sell to retailers may indeed have a role. That will come into play if readers find a reason to shop at thousands of different e-stores for their e-books. I’m not sure I see a reason for that dispersion to happen. I see plenty of reasons for the stores to open, but not many for the customers to migrate. But it’s definitely something to watch.
The issue of piracy and of defending the existence of writing as a profession is important. When we look at the right way of accomplishing this, I suspect that the answer will be “It depends!”
I hope you’ll all tune in again and again.
I would say your comments are sensible but optimistic, as most forecasting is. I would add that like most academics (for whom the future is putatively here) the first thing I do after downloading the latest research paper… is print it out.
The first obstacle is, as you say, e-readers. I have own several and do not use them when i can avoid it. low contrast, unpleasant things.
Once that happens we shall see just hpw great the power of the ‘bookness’ of p-books is. Are they obsolete anologue clung to only by real geeks (e.g. vinyl records vs. CDs and downloads), optional depending on lifestyle (e.g. wrist watches vs. just using your cell phone) or just not the same thing despite what logic might suggest (e.g. denim vs. synthetics).
Ah, yes, the reader is still the weakest link. Then again, have you tried the Kindle? I must say, this is an amazing little gadget. I’m totally in love with mine.
I went with the Sony ereader. It is less hideous than previous tech.
I would not go Kindle on principle as Amazon summarily tossed all my ebooks off their site to prepared for the Mobi-Kindle market share grab. I support the most DRM free options available, currently Sony e (reads native pdf tolerably well) and fictionwise.
I understand your feelings about how Amazon handled the run-up to the introduction of the Kindle, and I, too, prefer DRM free as a model for the future of ebooks.
But I’m not going to boycott the best reader device yet introduced (I think), because I do believe that ebooks can be the making of the small press, and that the faster we can bring this about, the better. It’s a judgment call, though.
[...] blogged before about how the book business may be about to undergo a radical shift, as mass paperbacks in some [...]
Heather Shaw…
My name is Haether L. (Morris) Shaw. I live in Bend, Oregon and my parents are Demmis and Donna Morris. I have one borther, Jeffry Morris and one sister, Trician Medrano. I am married to Michael C. (Benninger) Shaw. We previously lived in the Sacra…
Even though I genuinely like this publish, I think there was an punctuational error near towards the end of the 3rd paragraph.
Thank you for your feedback.