Publishers Association Suggests Book Industry Adapting to New Tech
By Karla Robinson
October 30, 2012
October 30, 2012
- With the advent of e-readers and tablets, people aren’t reading less and authors aren’t searching for new jobs. In fact, by many reports, consumers are reading more and, as this fall publishing season demonstrates, there is a great range of books still being produced.
- “The notion that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or information ecosystem of our time doesn’t hold up to the evidence,” suggests The Atlantic.
- Trade sales increased 13.1 percent to $2.33 billion in the first six months of 2012, according to the Association of American Publishers, which looked at 1,186 companies.
- “The most important indicator is the continuing boost in e-book sales, up 34.4 percent, to $621.3 million, which makes it competitive with the totals for hardcover print sales,” explains the article. “When you consider that it was only with the appearance of Amazon’s first Kindle reader in 2007 that e-book sales took off, the pace of change is stunning.”
- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently revealed that his company doesn’t make any money on selling Kindle devices. “What we find is that when people buy a Kindle they read four times as much as they did before they bought the Kindle,” said Bezos. “But they don’t stop buying paper books. Kindle owners read four times as much, but they continue to buy both types of books.”
- Amazon notoriously makes hard bargains with publishers and they in turn have become dependent on Amazon and other tech companies.
- “Instead of the competition among traditional booksellers for the attention of readers that was for so long the way books were sold,” The Atlantic writes, “publishers now must confront the immense power and reach of tech giants and adapt to their influence.”
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