I honestly don't see why this is much of a problem? Does the book industry truly need hypebeasts to survive? 4% of your market buying the same paperback in some mass hysteria moment is not sustainable, that's just not how physical books work. Diversity in literature is a good thing, people reading different things is a good thing.
We now have pretty empirical proof that the algorithm driven sales via online and big retail sales channels make the industry more hit driven and less diverse.
The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback? After a 20 year decline the stores had stabilized in recent years but the pandemic wrecked them. Too soon to tell but I’m pessimistic for their future, which makes me worry about publishing long term.
No. The tax break went on for too long, and that online bookstore became a global near-monopoly on all physical items the size of a coffee table or smaller. Before that, traditional bookstores had already been slammed by grocery-store sized bestseller warehouse chains - the more than a decade long state subsidy to internet retailers actually killed those.
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/How-Amazon-factor-ki...
A lot of Amazon's growth (and really any internet retailer) was because of inefficiencies they worked out of the merchandising process, but a lot of it was stuff like not paying sales tax if they didn't have a physical presence in the state which gave them an unfair advantage IMO. That benefit is disappearing as state's are starting to realize the damage to their tax base (FL amazingly being one of those even though we've paid Amazon sales tax for a while since they have a large presence here), but the damage has been done already in a lot of areas.
Amazon collects sales tax in every jurisdiction outside the USA, yet still had incredible growth. It's not really about prices ( a new book I want is £7 cheaper on ebay ) but convenience.
Here is the place where you wanna go to get information about the industry: https://www.bookweb.org. You might could dig enough to find answers to all the claims in this thread.
The question is how do we algorithmically boost unique content without bringing along junk content.
By the mid-1960's every petroleum and electronics conglomerate had capital that it couldn't put back in its own business, so they started buying other businesses, and publishers were a popular target.
Once the publishers were controlled by people who were motivated by money they tried to make more of it but in the process profitability dropped, sometimes below zero.
Particularly interesting to me is that a) American publishing early on consisted mostly of reprinting foreign hits due to lax copyright b) the 1920s golden age was largely accounted to by macroeconomic trends c) in the 40s publishers got by printing hits for the overseas military and d) even the “modern” publishing industry born in the 50s was subsidized by commercial hits.
Most people do not read for pleasure often. Those who do will most often read hits. Those who read outside of that are a very small portion of the population.
Or they diversify into other fields like stationery where people actually prefer buying them in person sometimes.
Some never stopped. Powell's (physical) bookstore in Portland is bigger than most city libraries I've been in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books
Everything I've read indicates bookstores have done phenomenally well during the pandemic
> Bookstore sales fell nearly 30 percent in 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
This is true of music, books, art, everything.
The hits will always be present, and this is OK so long as the underlying businesses continue to invest in the long tail to fund the next generation of writers.
There are many publishers today whose whole operation is basically funded by two or three authors that sell really well. Those earnings offload the cost and losses of the other books.
I wrote a draft of a book around the beginning of the pandemic. At the end, I lost interest and moved on to other things. (The whole idea of trying to get it published looked harder than writing the first draft.)
Honestly, I'm kinda curious what the "time commitment" is to revise and publish. It probably took me about 100 hours to write the first draft. When I've looked back I see typos, so I assume that putting the polish needed to try to publish it would take at least another 100 hours.
Of course these changes happen due to consumer decisions. It's creative destruction and I wouldn't want to live in a static society. But for people who are attached to the thing that's disappearing, it's a little sad. I've discovered authors by mistake in bookstores. I use Amazon and Alibris all the time but it's not the same as a bookstore.
My $50 Fire tablet can hold 1000+ books in PDF form not to mention Kindle format, HTML, etc. It's almost as good as "read a penguin paperback" on the bus or in bed.
Go to an academic library and you see the stacks are empty (of people), books rarely circulated, but people are crowded around the computer terminals. (e.g. smart introverts go use the terminal deepest in the stacks)
"Books" as a form of literature could survive the end of physical books quite well, just as "Movies" could survive if the theaters never re-opened and it was all direct to video.
Contrast that to Lowe's or Kohl's or some other store that sells physical objects that are still in demand.
B and N tried the "build a community space with free WiFi" but in our town it became a downmarket version of the public library (another five minutes from the police station) and one day they "kicked the bums out" and as I walked by an Asperger's female with poor hygiene was complaining about it.
(Hmmm.... but what if I had 7 e-ink pads?)
That's exactly how physical books work. It's always been this way. All media is a hit driven business with a long tail (perhaps with the exception of film which doesn't have much of a long tail).
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
(works on Firefox too)