I found another “death of print” article, like the ones I mentioned here, though this one at least has a fairly novel take on why publishers should be happy that e-books are coming in. In PC Magazine, John Dvorak suggests that e-books will be a key to selling more books overall.
First of all, we know from anecdotal evidence that people with an ebook reader often buy hard copies of the books they really want. The ebook reader is a filtering mechanism. It reminds me of the Napster era in the music business. During its heyday, people were buying more CDs than ever. Yes, they were bootlegging like crazy, but also buying like crazy. I’ve discussed this phenomenon ad nauseum, but suffice it to say that Napster was like a great sampling system that resulted in sales.
The same will happen with ebooks. The book publishers should relish the prospects of the easy money ahead.
I’m not so sure I buy this. If this is true, print book sales should be surging, but it appears that they’re starting to decline as e-book sales rise. Might there be an error in Mr. Dvorak’s calculations?
There are at least two ways to look at the situation: First, as you have done. That is, if Dvorak is right print sales should be increasing rather than declining. The second point of view, and the one to which I subscribe, is that the decline of print sales would be much steeper, and faster, except for the fact that people are buying print copies of favorite ebooks when print copies are available. I know that I have bought hardcover versions of ebooks after having read the ebook and deciding that I would want the book to be a permanent part of my library. Unfortunately, ebooks are still too ephemeral to be part of a permanent collection.
One aspect not addressed is whether publishers (traditional and self) are missing the two-version sale by not offering both reasonably priced ebook and reasonably priced print versions of a book. Many of the ebooks I have enjoyed — and would have bought in hardcover after having read the ebook version — simply are not available in hardcover and are available only in very overpriced print-on-demand paperback.
I’m with Rich here. Ebooks, especially if predictions pan out that all the 99-cent editions will bring prices down and down, even for the big publishers, will capture the lion’s share of the mass market paperback, cheap sales — the sales to readers who just want to read a book once, maybe, then move on.
But this will kill those mass market, low-margin sales for the traditional publishers, allowing, even forcing, them to concentrate on deluxe editons, hardcovers, and so on. This market has higher margins, though lower sales. These are sold to an author or book’s true fans, the ones who want to treasure the book, and read it again and again in a beautiful edition. Illustrations and the like, better quality binding, and all that. These ultra-deluxe editions then could be repackaged into higher-quality trade paperback editions for mid-market sales.
Basically, Dvorak is thinking about what traditional publishers ought to do, in his opinion, to adapt and innovate and move forward. Unfortunately, all the evidence we’ve seen so far from traditional publishers indicates that they don’t want to adapt or innovate or move forward, and have, so far, only closed their eyes and wished ebooks would go away.
Now that it’s clear that ebooks will not go away, maybe the publishers will wake up and try to save their businesses, before they themselves get fired in favor of executives who will face facts.
I think the key phrase is “books they really want.” Someone who buys and reads ten ebooks might turn around and buy print copies for the three he enjoyed most. The publishers of those three books will make out in that they got that reader’s money twice. The publishers of the other seven books will have to settle for whatever he paid for the ebooks. Of course, it’s possible he would have bought only five books if he had to pay hardcover prices for all of them, so it might still be a win, overall.