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‘E-books now outselling print 3:1 on oreilly.com’: You listening, Random, S&S, Author’s Guild?
December 24, 2009 | 2:15 am
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By David Rothman
Earlier today I pointed out how backwards the Authors Guild had been on such issues as DRM and text-to-speech bans. Hurting e-books will only hurt the industry as a whole.
Now comes further evidence of the folly of being a trog on such matters. O’Reily reports that e-books are outselling p-titles 3:1. Click on the chart for a more detailed view.
Might this be a harbinger for the less techish regions of the publishing industry—as e-reader gizmos improve and people grow more tech savvy? Even romance readers, in fact especially romance readers, are becoming hip, as Jane at Dear Author can attest.
Now, if only the traditionalists will start embracing rather than shunning the future!
Look, print isn’t going to fade into oblivion, there’ll still be a place for paper books, but the industry needs to look ahead and think in terms of paper-and-digital synergies, as opposed to trying to stymie the growth of E.
Check out Fictbot’s bookstore post, covering this topic among others. We’ll be publishing it later this weekend.
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Comments:
Unfortunately, David, you are not comparing apples and apples. O’Reilly’s books are tech oriented and appeal to a tech-oriented crowd. Most of Random House and S&S’s output are not aimed at this crowd. It would be more meaningful if a second-tier publisher’s general list was selling 3:1 in favor of ebooks.
Happy holidays, Rich. I thought I’d addressed the issue when I wrote: “Might this be a harbinger [italics added] for the less techish regions of the publishing industry—as e-reader gizmos improve and people grow more tech savvy?” Once, with exceptions, only techies read e-books. Now we have the Kindle. It’s just gonna get better, even if, no, those 3:1 stats in favor of E aren’t going to happen overnight.
Of course I hope that p-books don’t go away. I don’t think they will. For a long long time, P will have its fans, and as Ficbot has written, there is a place for both formats.
Thanks,
David
@Rich — you’re right that O’Reilly customers tend to be more technical than the mainstream, and therefore tend to be early adopters. But that’s been true for many, many other technologies now in widespread use. Fifteen years ago, it would have been accurate to say that O’Reilly customers were much more likely to be using this new World Wide Web thingy; ditto for email, RSS, Twitter, VoIP, etc… I certainly don’t expect that kind of reversal for a major trade house anytime soon, but it is coming, and they should absolutely be planning for it. We think of ourselves as “canaries in the coal mine” among publishers.
No surprise romance readers are hip to ebooks – nobody else can see what you’re reading!
I have always been suspicious of statistics and the way they are manipulated. The 3:1 ratio is only for a niche of published books and not ALL books. I will not give up real books. It is understandable if current publications are digitized, but what about the millions of books from the past. Who is to decide which books are lost to time and “progress”. Heck computers didn’t start out in the home and even though we are seeing the beginnings of Tabletop’s and hand held computers, I am more concerned with what is lost than what is gained
This may be a harbinger of the way book publishing is headed, but I think a better comparison is the music industry. There are a variety of ways to purchase or acquire music, and different demographics have different preferences. Susan Boyle not only was a smash sensation, she was a sensation in the supposedly obsolete CD format. What’s more, vinyl record sales are on the rise as kids discover that Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac sound okay on an iPod but awesome on a record–and you can fill the room and share the music with your friends when you play vinyl.
Similarly, there will always be those who prefer tactile books to eBooks, or who buy the eBook but then simply must have a physical copy of the very same book.