The Death of Print Publishing
We’ve all heard the news and predictions. It’s the beginning—or well past the beginning—of the end. In three years, or five, or seven, e-books will be the norm, and mass market paperbacks will slouch off to die with the other dinosaurs. As for traditional books in general, I believe they were recently outsold by e-books on Amazon.
News bulletin: Dorchester Publishing just announced it’s cutting its mass market paperback line to focus on e-books and POD.
Second news bulletin: They’re not the first publisher to do this. For example, Medallion announced the same thing just a few months ago.
Third news bulletin: Some agents are focusing on selling e-books.
Fourth news bulletin: Some writers make far more $$$ from their e-books or from self-publishing than from traditional, more acceptable kinds of publishing.
I could go on and on, friends, but clearly, it’s a Brave New World. Kindle, Kobo, and other e-book readers will soon rule the day, and the schools of the future will little resemble the ones we remember. Heck, they often little resemble them now.
My purpose here is not to predict where precisely all this electronic publishing is going to shake out, how dominant it’s going to be, whether an even newer form of publishing is going to emerge after all the constant updates have occurred, or any of that stuff. To be honest, there are folks who are far more knowledgeable about the subject. What I would like to do is share with you one experience I had. To me, it shows just how much writing has changed, at least when it comes to publishing.
About six weeks ago, I saw my doctor. Since an old used bookstore is located just thirty yards down the street, I decided to drop in for old times. I had done so fairly often in the past, and I loved the place. To me, musty, dimly-lit, used bookstores are magical. You never know what priceless treasure lurks in the stacks halfway down the next aisle. Perhaps it’s bound in leather with engravings by Gustave Dore, or is a SF paperback you could never find as a kid. To say that I have a fetish for books, and especially old, well-preserved, beautifully constructed books, is not going too far. I can remember that as early as the second grade or so, the smell of the books in the school library was clean and wondrous to me. To this day I love the look and feel of well-bound, brilliantly illustrated books, love to smell their pages.
In addition, there are two other reasons this used bookstore is the one I’ve loved the most. One is that every January 1, they used to have a free champagne and cheese open house to welcome in the New Year. The second is that I wrote a short story that takes place in the bookstore, and sold it to Brutarian for pro rates. You can find “Down from Oz” as my Oct. 2006 posting to this site at http://storytellersunplugged.com/johnrosenman/2006/10/
Anyway, I went to the bookstore, but the magic had faded. The musty, dimly-lit aisles and towering stacks were still there with their hidden treasures, but the place had a deserted, corpse-like aura to it, as if the party had long since moved elsewhere. On the way out, I stopped at the counter and struck up a conversation with the owner, who I knew casually from previous visits.
“How’s everything?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“And . . . business?”
A long look, as if I should know the answer.
“E-books?” I asked.
Yes, it was e-books and readers, plus their constant updating and improvements, including the opportunity to download books quickly from a vast library online. The owner told me that at one time, he used to sell fifteen print books a day online. Now he averaged one print book every three weeks.
Not only that, he told me about a New York City bookstore owner who came to this area hoping to find a buyer for his much bigger traditional store. You can imagine how he’s doing.
I was dying to ask the bookstore owner how much longer he could hold out, but felt it wouldn’t be appropriate. He volunteered the information. Two months, he said. He was finished.
Yesterday I went to see my doctor again and paused outside the bookstore. Closed for good. Gone the way of the buffalo. How sad, especially since I wanted to suggest to him that he try to keep up with the times a little and have a multiple author book signing for e-books, plus a demonstration of e-book readers, downloading, and all the bells and whistles and futuristic features that today’s Kindles and other brands offer.
Maybe, though, it’s for the best. The present moves on and like it or not, you have to keep pace. When I talked to the owner, he did seem to assume that traditional books were the only legitimate or worthwhile ones, and everything else was like a bastard cousin. However, there are plenty of people, especially young people, who can’t imagine getting through the day without their readers, especially since they’re capable of storing a decent sized library in the palm of their hand.
In the last three weeks, I’ve noticed an ad for Kindle on local television, a watershed event if I ever saw one. The ad shows a couple at the beach reading from their Kindles, thereby refuting the smug belief of some critics that because of sand, water, and other problems, people can’t read electronically at the beach. Apparently they can, and if one swimmer stays onshore while the others swim (as you would do for any valuable items), there should be little risk of theft.
Perhaps print publishing isn’t doomed, but I suspect that in five, ten, or twenty years, it will be a mere shadow of its former self. The digital age is here, folks, and our children are its prophets.
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