From Anne R. Allen’s Blog with Ruth Harris:
Who could have predicted the bright ray of light that shined on publishing during this pandemic! But it did shine, and will continue to shine, as people rekindle their love of reading and writing! Publishing is more profitable than ever before in its history…for the second year in a row.
Once the streaming binge of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and other channels grew a bit stale, people rediscovered books and how reading engages the imagination making it a totally different enjoyment experience than passively watching a screen. Books have been selling at a brisk pace ever since. And the profits reaped by the publishing giants has soared. I wish some would make it back to writers and the publishing staff, but that’s another story altogether.
Now that we can breathe a sigh of relief, what does publishing have in store for us in 2022? Here are my predictions:
1. Self-publishing will continue to grow and be profitable.
Bookstores will continue to prosper, even as Amazon continues to grow its market share. For the year to date (2021), bookstore sales are up 39.6%, to $7.1 billion. And that’s an increase from a huge year last year.
All of publishing is healthy and there is no reason for you not to get back on that horse and finish writing your books.
2. Diversity will grow even more, both with authors and with publisher staffs.
So many high-level (VP and up) positions were created to encourage and hire diverse staff within publishers. To me that’s the second phase of diversifying publishing. Phase one began 3-4 years ago with editors buying books from a more diverse ethnic and cultural pool of authors.
I don’t see that phase slowing down anytime soon either. But with the hiring of high-level diverse employees within publishing companies in phase two, we can begin to see real change in the industry. It will be a joy to watch and we’ll all be the richer for it.
3. Hybrid workplaces will deepen and New York will be the center of publishing in name only.
All plans to return to the publishers’ offices in January 2022 were cancelled as the Omicron variant surged this past fall. I believe this signals a huge shift in how publishing is done. When editorial and art departments can work from home, creativity can soar.
Change can happen. And the bureaucracy will be replaced with new energy and passion when employees don’t have to spend endless hours in meetings. Even with an increase in Zoom meetings, multitasking can make them bearable.
Hybrid work environments, now that employees have their home workspaces dialed in, are a harbinger of the future. And employers will dig the extra profits they make from a dramatic decrease in overhead.
. . . .
5. Supply chain and paper shortage woes will continue.
It takes a long time to straighten out something as broken as the publishing supply chain. Books with a lot of images (children’s picture books, coffee table books, novelty books) are mainly printed in China. But the empty cargo containers in the U.S. are not making it back to China for refilling and that is slowing down everything.
As agents, we see publication dates stretching out to 2025 and beyond. And I’m predicting that it won’t be fixed in 2022. And when you add to that the high cost of paper, the price of books at retail is going up (along with everything else you buy).
6. There will be a legal battle over how ebook sales are regulated to libraries.
Again, states are trying to legislate how much publishers can charge libraries to loan ebooks. This is a big deal, since it is the largest growth area for public libraries…especially during the pandemic. But even after we can once again go out safely in public, ebook reading is experiencing a sea change that some readers will never go back from.
This topic needs to be legislated from the federal level if the publishers won’t see reason.
7. Publishing will look more deeply at changing its business model.
Publishing companies can no longer deny that the 200-year-old way they’ve been running their empires makes no economic sense.
Here’s what Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch had to say about it: “Publishers have long carried the overhead of big-city offices, travel and entertainment, in-person events, book fairs, and other accustomed ways of operating. We’ve been profitable enough that we haven’t pressured ourselves to learn all we could do through long-available online communications, digital marketing, and remote-working capabilities.”
Working from home, freed from onerous commutes, without in-person calls, pitches, conferences, and shows, publishers have opened their minds to new ways of working.” This gives me hope that as profitability soars due to changes in an inefficient business model, authors might actually benefit through modestly higher advances and larger royalty percentages (especially in ebooks…I mean come on!)
. . . .
10. eBooks are experiencing a growing spurt of popularity that is not going to diminish.
When you combine the paper shortage/price increases, supply chain woes and convenience of spontaneously acquiring an ebook in the privacy of your own home without having to get out of your pajamas, the lure is too sexy to resist.
For you self-published authors, time to get out your marketing and promotional hat, put your books on sale, spiff up the covers, really pay attention to your metadata (especially key search terms), so avid readers can find your work. Because ebooks are not going away.
11. Audiobook popularity will continue to grow.
See #10 above for reasons. Add in listening to stories while driving, making meals, exercising and you can see why.
Link to the rest at From Anne R. Allen’s Blog with Ruth Harris
Hulu has a lot of really good aussie shows of different kinds, from outback soaps to mysteries. Among the latter, HARROW (HOUSE meets CSI). Good canadian mysteries like CARDINAL.
Netflix SF varies from the great LOST IN SPACE remaster to the awful ANOTHER LIFE (snowflakes in space).
If you like Nordic Noir and you haven’t yet watched it, MARCELLA is brilliant but full of intentional(?) loose ends.
“Once the streaming binge of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and other channels grew a bit stale, people rediscovered books”
— this is what is called ‘wishful thinking’.
Dunno about that. We’re finding the pickings on the many streaming services leaner and leaner – and we only watch one show with dinner, and something shorter before bed.
The good stuff: good writers (most important – actors don’t make up their lines), good actors, good production values, PLOTS – is expensive. Comedy requires really good ones.
So there is a tsunami of you-know-what out there to choose from, and it’s hard to find something to watch without putting in some effort.
And when we find something – it has only ten episodes! Or six. Or three.
And lately there is an increasing amount paid to giving main characters such impressive and problematic personal lives that it is impossible to see how they actually manage to function, and holes in the main plot are glaring. For example, it is great to have more women detectives – with children – but “Oh, come on!” is my reaction to many of their childcare arrangements.
Is there an equivalent term for ‘throwing the book against the wall’ in TV-land? Our solution is to go watch the last episode, and fastforward through much of the garbage. Padding. Irrelevant. And to skip the sequels. Which leaves us with few things to watch.
Which services, might one ask?
Preferred genre(s)?
My experience is that the recommendation robots on Netflix and Hulu are pretty good.
I mostly avoid network content but there is lots of international content that compensates. So far, I haven’t run out of good enough content.
But milleage varies.
Main thing is that it is as delusional to think of streaming as a fad as the expectation that ebooks will fade away. Some people just refuse to accept change when it runs counter to their preferences.
I have always noted that the new things for any year (whether video, music, or books) present very slim pickings for anything that I want to invest time and/or money into. In a good year, there are perhaps a dozen or less.
But with the huge number of years that have passed (different for each media, of course) – there is more than I could ever consume even with strict dedication to the attempt. What with other things in life, I am barely scratching the surface of any of it.
Example – one of my goals for this year is to finally open a Terry Pratchett book.
The Scandinavian Netflix stuff is pretty good. A few from Iceland and Finland are very good. I’m not smart enough to figure out what the French movies are about.
Hulu has a lot of really good aussie shows of different kinds, from outback soaps to mysteries. Among the latter, HARROW (HOUSE meets CSI). Good canadian mysteries like CARDINAL.
Netflix SF varies from the great LOST IN SPACE reboot to the awful ANOTHER LIFE (snowflakes in space).
If you like Nordic Noir and you haven’t yet watched it, MARCELLA is brilliant but full of intentional(?) loose ends.
Duh, nope, duh, duh, duh, duh, hah!, duh, Crazy Eddie!, duh, duh, doubtful.
They got the present right but they misread the future.
https://jeffbeaty.com/2012/11/crazy-eddie-wants-you/