Comments on: ‘Too many books, not enough profits’: ‘On the Media’ looks at the book biz, including E

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:37:32 +0000

Ah, but in the era of the ebook and the infinite tail the whole business model changes. In a properly run business, the size of the catalog (especially the back catalog) becomes a pure profit center even if it takes micropayments to get there.
Yes, in a 19th century B&M treeware business there might be such a thing as an unprofitable book. In a digital world though? Only if you don’t know how to size advances and promote your catalog.
Sorry, but the ball is in the publisher’s court; incremental inventory costs are minimal; large catalogs will be better than small catalogs. (Anybody even notice that the folks at Baen are scarfing up loads of “name” SF writers from the 50′s and 60′s? Hamilton, Heinlein, Chandler, Laumer, etc. Smart. Very smart. But then, we knew they were.)
For profits, the name of the game hereafter is managing content acquisition and content promotion.

By: Jack Tingle

Jack Tingle — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:30:41 +0000

I disagree, Felix. One of the things publisher need to do to earn their money is to be a bit more discriminating in what they publish. Publishing too many unprofitable books is part of the problem.

The publishers would likely answer me by saying that predicting which books will take off is hard. I’m afraid, though, that “My business is difficult to do well,” is an answer which most industries will laugh at.

Mind you, some of thoes unprofitable books will probably be ones that you and I would like to see, but putting out too many titles and having too many of them fail is a bad way to try and make a profit.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:34:16 +0000

There is no such thing as too many books.
Too few readers maybe but not too many books.

The amount of books a society produces are directly proportional to its population size (duh, right?) and its creativity and productivity. There are quite a few societies on the planet that are producing essentially zero books. These same societies also have high birthrates. Those societies I’d worry about.
But the US? Nope!

The US just needs to increase readership a bit and the big publishers need to get off their rears and start *earning* their cashflow instead of relying on retailers to do all the heavy lifting.