Looks as if print books might be here to stay.

by Rick Blechta

I found an interesting article on the Penguin Random House website about book reading trends in the US. Read it by clicking HERE. I’ll wait while you do.

Okay, so the big take-away is that Americans are still reading at roughly the same rate as last year: 72% having read or partially read at least one book. That’s sort of good news. (I’d like to know the number of people who read more than one book, though. I think that would probably be more telling. My guess is that the number would drop precipitously.)

Anyway, the other big takeaway from the article is this: the level of market penetration by e-books appears to be flattening. Now that is interesting.

It wasn’t so long ago that there was great hand-wringing over “the death of printed books.” The way the pundits told it, in a short time we’d all be carrying around tablets or Kindles or the like and libraries with shelves full of books would start to disappear. For those of us who enjoy holding a “real” book in our hands, that was a pretty scary scenario. The thought of new books only coming out electronically with no print versions available anymore would be very sad to face.

However, if you’ve been around the block more than a handful of times, you know how it is when a technological advancement comes along. For example, television was supposed to be the death knell for radio and movie theatres. Never happened. Another example: CDs were going to bury vinyl recordings, and for a while, they did. But now, improbably, vinyl is making somewhat of a comeback due to its better sound reproduction. DVDs did replace video cassettes — as CDs replaced audio cassettes — but that was more a function of convenience. Cassettes were very clunky and unreliable, plus they degraded badly over time.

Back to e-books and the article mentioned above. Something else screamed out at me that you may not have noticed: reading of printed books in the 18-29 age range was over double that of reading books in a digital format. Knowing how young people love their electronic gadgets, I was quite astounded.

Looks as if electronic books are finding their high-water mark in the great scheme of things in the same way that television found its place.

If you’d asked me even three years ago, I would have reversed those numbers. My supposition was that printed books would not disappear, but that books in electronic formats would account for the majority of sales with good old paper hanging on because of old farts like me.

Shows how much the pundits and trend-makers know…

A "State of the Union" on e-books

by Rick Blechta

I've been meaning to write this post for a few weeks, but unfortunately, family issues have kept that from happening. Sorry about the missing/poor posts of the past few weeks, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

But I'm back today and have something really interesting in the print versus e-book world. First, you have a reading assignment (and if you're interested in this sort of topic, then I guarantee it won't be onerous!): How-apple-and-big-publishers-pushed-e-books-toward-failure.

Who would have thunk it? For a few years now, everyone in the book industry has been trumpeting or mourning the death of paper books – depending on whose side of the fence you're on – and now it seems that paper and e are finding their natural levels in the marketplace. It's not as if everyone was letting this happen naturally. Publishers and retailers were all trying to manipulate how book commerce was going to proceed. The courts certainly had a lot of do with what has been shaking down, but I'm willing to bet that if left alone, purchasers of books would have done a fine job by themselves in sorting out how these two ways of consuming reading would operate and what market share they would have as things went forward.

As for price, that's a different matter and the way this all has come to a head. Retailers and producers have always worked – both separately and in concert – to set the price of what the public buys. It's only natural that both these entities would want to control prices absolutely. Amazon is certainly within its writes to set whatever retail price it wants, just as publishers should be allowed to set their price. The rub comes when the retailer (in this case Amazon) tries to unilaterally dictate the wholesale price to producer (in this case publishers) in a take-it-or-leave-it scenario. That's where the whole thing breaks down. I find it almost astounding that Amazon decided to back down, considering the stranglehold they have on book sales of any kind. I'm sure it's all driven by dollars and cents as it always is.

The fact that Apple decided to carry on the fight even as the Big 5 publishers settled with Amazon and the Supreme Court forced the issue by declining to hear the case as much as would have been the case had they decided to hear it and render a decision.

So, as is always the case, prices will continue to go up (which is the normal order of commerce) and you can be sure at the end of the day that the consumer and the author (the real producers in publishing) will be getting the short end of the stick. But no matter what...