In a letter to its membership posted last week Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, has urged his members to use their trusted voices to tell their customers the truth about Amazon. He writes: "You and your bookselling colleagues know the real narrative of the Amazon story, but it's important that we keep in mind the viewpoint and experience of our customers. Amazon's public message of low prices and wide selection are, regrettably, the only story that many consumers know . . . I believe that the most influential and trusted voice in helping to tell the true story to your customers is you. Armed with the facts - and those facts are extraordinarily persuasive - your outreach to your customers is critically important."
Links of the week August 12 2013 (33)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
19 August 2013
What critics of Amazon choose to ignore, of course, is how Amazon has been a boon to many small businesses, particularly self-published writers, or small traders who sell via its marketplace. When UK bookseller Keith Smith asked authors to stop linking to Amazon for their book sales, he was criticised for failing to recognise that some authors make their living by doing precisely that. To them, Smith was trying to save his living by limiting theirs
While there are perils around trying to identify exactly what a self-publisher is, Bowker Market Research estimates that approximately 3% of books bought by Americans (and 1% of dollars spent) were by self-published authors. Further, these self-published books accounted for 8% of ebook purchases throughout 2012, and 10% of all adult fiction e-books bought.
One of the things most frequently overlooked in good professional market research material is the "discussion." Sometimes it's shoehorned into a heavily bulleted "executive summary." At other times, it's shunted to the side as "observations."
2012 confirmed that the ebook is here to stay. For 2012 as a whole, ebooks accounted for one in five units (22% share of all books), and one in ten of the dollars spent on books. But that doesn't mean people have moved away from print - the majority of books are still bought and sold in print. What it means, is that the ebook, especially in fiction (where ebooks accounted for 38% of units in the fourth quarter of 2012, and over 50% of units in the romance genre), has now established itself as a major format category along with hardcover, mass market paperback and trade paperback. Despite the growth of ebooks, the new figures show that their sales are growing at a more sustainable rate.
More on Amazon
At The Domino Project, founder Seth Godin writes that what we're seeing today is "the end of the independent bookstore (and a new golden age for books)."
After pointing out the extraordinary influence that the Book of the Month Club had in shaping what America read in the years immediately following World War II, Godin celebrates the way in which bookstores took over and capitalized on its role when the Club began its inevitable decline.
"Here's the magic formula for a successful bookstore industry. Every month, a few new hardcover books are hand-sold, recommended by the local store." (Taking over the role of the BOMC). "A few catch on and become bestsellers. Within its own cultural pocket, each book becomes a must-read, with the only source being the full-price local bookstore. The result? With a 40% profit margin and full return privileges, the local store can thrive. They don't need to carry every book, just the books that sell. And in the early 1960s, it wasn't unusual for a book to be a bestseller for a year or more."
Today, of course, Barnes and Noble is no longer the source of all evil facing independent booksellers - in the eyes of many, that role has been taken over by Amazon. But as Godin admits, "If you love books, it's hard to see Amazon as a villain. More books sold to more people for more reasons than any other retailer in history. More cross-selling, hand-selling and up-selling too. The web pages of Amazon, on average, are better informed than many bookstore clerks."
12 August 2013
It's the year 2000 and you have a great book that you want published and sold in bookstores everywhere. It's a lifelong dream and, besides, this book is great and important and everyone should read it.
So, what do you do? Best first move is to get an agent. Agents know editors. They have a track record of getting work bought and published by publishers. Publishers trust agents to bring them the good stuff. If an agent likes your manuscript, it's no guarantee it will get published but it's better than the alternative. The only drawback is that agents take a 15% cut of whatever you make, which is fine because, hey, you wouldn't make much if anything without one.
For some agents, those who deal with only the biggest authors, the new publishing paradigm might not change much for now. Many of these authors still still want and need agents to help them manage their careers, negotiate big, complicated contracts, sell foreign rights, movie rights, audio rights, app rights, other licensing deals and such. Plus, many of these relationships have developed and grown over time. You wouldn't abandon a friend just so you don't have to share as much of your seven-figure advance, would you? But many other agents are finding themselves in a position of having to legitimize what they do every day to their clients and potential clients.
FORTUNE -- Amazon's dominance in digital books is under perpetual attack by Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL). Now you can add another threat to the list: the public library. That's what an analyst from Barclays suggested in a recent research report. Consumers will likely avoid buying e-books if they can borrow them from the library for free.
Superficially, libraries seem to be on the ball with digital books. Just over three-quarters of libraries lend e-books, according to a survey last fall by the American Library Association. Even people who do not own an e-reader can often check them out from their local branch. Nearly 40% of libraries let patrons borrow Kindles, Nooks, or other similar devices, the survey found. The convenience of downloading library e-books is debatable. Many libraries let people do it from home. Some others require visiting the library branch in person. The actual mechanics can be a bit complicated for some patrons because libraries sometimes have multiple e-book catalogues. But the most serious challenge facing libraries is that most have relatively few e-books to chose from. The Alexandria Library, in Virginia, has 35,000 digital titles vs. 450,000 in print, for example. A lack of money for buying new digital books is a big hurdle, for sure. But there are other factors at play.