Extracts - The Publishing State We’re In
Barry Turner
The book trade is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as Churchill might have observed. Among publishers and booksellers, the mood can be downbeat, even gloomy. Yet there are more books being published than ever before, more books being sold than ever before and more, many more, aspiring authors than ever before. A YouGov poll revealed that 10 per cent of respondents put a literary career at the top of their list of chosen professions, way ahead of any other first choice. Oh yes, and there are more people reading than ever before, 17 per cent up in three decades. So what is the problem? The answer is, in one highly emotive word – change.
A changing industry
You might think that by now book people would be used to change. There has been enough of it in recent years, starting with the end of price fixing through to the boom in online sales. But all this has happened within familiar contours, with the book as a recognizably solid object which readers want to own and keep. Now we are moving into new territory. A computer literate generation is increasingly accustomed to reading on screen.
The Big Three
The digitization of libraries is well under way. Within ten years Google plans to offer up to thirty-two million titles on its database. Rivals Amazon and Microsoft are also digitizing hundreds of thousands of books. Bill Gates predicts that he will soon be able to offer students an affordable hand-held device containing all the books they need for any particular course. Eventually, readers will be able to follow the lead of music fans and simply digitize their own libraries. The revolution extends to everyday pleasure reading. In the next year or two hand-held electronic readers containing up to two hundred titles will be commonplace. Move on a short time for e-books to be available in a multiplicity of formats, from mobile phones and iPods to MP3 players.
A rapidly evolving market
Two questions immediately spring to mind. If all the world is going digital, what future is there for the printed book? And if the printed book is on the way out, how will anyone in the trade – publishers, booksellers and, not least, writers – make their living?
We start with a few words of comfort. History tells us that when a new medium of communication or entertainment comes along, however exciting and user friendly, it rarely, if ever, does away with older rivals. On the contrary, competition can stimulate a rejuvenating burst of creativity. It happened when live theatre was threatened by the movies and again when television led the assault on the cinema. Now, television is having to reinvent itself as computer games and other laptop diversions bid for audiences. The same could happen to the printed book. It all depends on how the book trade adapts to a rapidly evolving market.
Thinking digital
After a wobbly start when all things digital were seen as an enemy to be quashed before it became too powerful, it is beginning to dawn on publishers that the new economy is more opportunity than threat. It is still early days but publishers’ websites are becoming increasingly sophisticated with specialized sites attracting like-minded readers and book buyers. Booksellers too are beginning to use the Net to discover niche markets.
Leading the way, it hardly needs saying, is Amazon. Is it really only five years since the received wisdom in the book trade was of the imminent collapse of Amazon? Now it is the third largest bookseller with 11 per cent of total sales. With consumers converting enthusiastically to online shopping, Amazon has the edge over the high street, not least in the range of titles on offer: 1.3 million as against, say, 50,000 in a large chain bookshop.
Authors are heard to complain that while online sales and aggressive marketing by the chains (three for the price of two and so on) are building revenue and profits, the emphasis on top titles by instantly recognizable names is to favour quantity over quality. A quick glance at front-counter displays of leading bookshops would seem to support this thesis. Dumb books for dumb people, might be the appropriate slogan for certain retailers.
New opportunities for new writers
But the fears of mid-list authors, those who stop well short of the bestseller list, need to be put into context. The mid-list consists of authors on the way down as well as authors on the way up. The loudest groans come from writers who find they are going out of fashion. To blame the Internet or the decline of the independent bookshop or the state of the weather is too often a face-saving excuse for something that was going to happen anyway. For talented newcomers who need to get a foothold in the market, the signs are more encouraging. One of the most impressive book trade statistics to appear recently is that a quarter of Amazon’s sales come from outside its top 100,000 titles.
Changing tact
Those on the lower rungs can also take solace from the growing power of niche websites. As for the high street retailers, it is true that their marketing has been driven by bestsellers at the expense of medium sellers. But this may soon change as the chains recognize the error of trying to compete with the supermarkets by heavy discounting on lead titles. It is a battle they cannot win. But they can score profit points by catering for a more discriminating public who value informed and helpful sales staff offering a range of titles that give credence to basic intelligence. Waterstones.com guide on how to get published, its New Voices promotion and the renewed support for local publishing are all promising signs of the times.
An exciting time for publishing
But the biggest opportunity for high street booksellers to raise profits and their image is surely in the area of e-book retailing.
Francis Bennett and Michael Holdsworth, whose BA-sponsored report Embracing the Digital Age, was published last November, warns that the industry must prepare itself for the new or risk losing to an outside player ‘who may be bigger than the industry itself’.
Publishers are picking up speed in digitizing their back list and it will not be long before new titles are available in e-format simultaneously with hard print publication. Booksellers, as Bennett and Holdsworth acknowledge, have been much slower at coming into the game. They urge uniform standards for all forms of digital marketing. Says Holdsworth, ‘We want a situation where someone can go into a bookshop with their Blackberry, ask for a title by a particular author and for the bookseller to be able to explain what is available and to go through the formats.’
This is the level of the thinking that should excite authors, particularly those who are still to make their breakthrough. The publishers and booksellers who are unable to face up to change will go out of business. For the rest, the tantalizing prospect is of an expanding market for a wider range of titles. Writers should wish them every success.