From MyFenton.com:
The book publishing industry experienced a slight shift in 2018.
Print book sales are rising, and independent bookstores are doing better compared to past years. The shift is that after years of rising numbers, e-book sales are stagnant in favor of physical books. Some news outlets suggest print books could be becoming more popular.
Karen Piacentini, owner of Fenton’s Open Book, said, “Book sales are up compared to e-book sales because people still like that book in their hand.”
. . . .
By November 2018, e-book sales slipped 3.9 percent last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. Hardback and paperback book sales grew 6.2 percent and 2.2 percent respectively. During the first nine months of 2018, hardback and paperback sales were at $4 billion combined, while e-book sales were at $770.9 million.
Fenton’s Open Book, and other independent bookstores, don’t only sell physical books. They also sell audio books through Libro.fm, which often has better prices than Amazon,
Piacentini said. Readers can use the service on their phone and listen to the books in their car using Bluetooth. They also sell e-books, but rarely.
. . . .
The number of independent booksellers increased by 35 percent from 2009 to 2015, according to the ABA.
“I think that our sales went up or stayed the same,” Piacentini said. “Independent bookstores are thriving. There was a couple hundred bookstores opening last year. Indies are growing every year. If you see a store closing, it’s because they lost their lease or they’ve been open for 30, 40 years and just want to close and couldn’t find a buyer.”
Link to the rest at MyFenton.com
Every 5 or 10 years or so I need to replace my Levis . Not being all that fashion forward the last time I needed to do so I went to a large shopping mall and saw their was two Jean shops. I walked into the first one. It did not sell Levis. I told the sales assistant sorry, I’m an old man set in my ways I only want levis. He made sure to direct me to everywhere but the other Jean shop. I of course did not take his advice. I went to the other jean shop, which was of course the Levis franchise.
Misdirectetion is of course part of marketing, but if you get caught it destroys trust. E books are cheeper then paper because overheards are cheaper no matter how many times industry pundits try to gaslight us.
“INDIE FRIENDLY PUBLISHING OPTIONS”
Translation: Options that leave out options we don’t like and the best option of all.
“We are not able to carry books from self-publishing platforms that have predatory pricing practices and are direct competitors to independent brick and mortar businesses such as Books Inc”
Translation: We could but we refuse to carry Amazon books. Because we just do. We hate them and suffer from a bad case of ADS.
“We can however recommend a new platform called Ingram Spark. Please feel free to download FAQ and pricing info here. Another publisher option is KOBO Writing Life, follow the links for more info.”
Translation: If you can’t get a tradpub contract go anywhere but Amazon. Please!
Ingram Spark is not terribly easy to deal with and Kobo has minimal presence in the US. Kobo is selling even less than Nook, mostly because they rely on local affiliates to do the heavy lifting. In the US that is the “ebook friendly” ABA members and Walmart.
Of the latter:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/10/27/walmart-is-actually-selling-ebooks-in-stores-but-still-doesnt-give-a-crap-about-selling-ebooks/
Notice they don’t want Indies to even consider Apple, Google, or Nook so they want Indies to give up on reaching 95% of ebook buyers. Coincidentally, all the Independent bookstores, whether actually open to Indie authors or not, combine to sell at most 5% of all pbooks in the US.
Of course, there’s a reason Kobo is trying to go through Walmart. Those ABA members combined barely move 5% of all pbooks anyway.
How important is being friendly with them?
Traditionals thought they could beat independents in the market without doing anything. That didn’t work.
So, they told us consumers found books so special that normal economic pricing factors didn’t apply. They did. Just like widgets. That didn’t work.
Then they thought they could beat independents in the market with name-calling. Remember the Tsunami of Swill? That didn’t work.
Then they tried the quality approach. Consumers would reject independents because of poor quality compared to traditionals. That didn’t work.
We have now entered the Voltemort phase.
They are trying to create a world without independents. These articles don’t reflect the ignorance of the author. They all know Amazon sells zillions of independents that aren’t in their counts. They want to seal off and protect their remaining consumer base by ignoring independents.
This lets them pretend the threat has passed while self-identifying as part of the real literary world. The real authors, serious authors, real editors, agents, and traditional publishers praise them. Critical thinkers, professors, and discerning readers nod their heads. Bookstore owners tell us attention to communities is the key.
They are all happy. They tell each other how well things are going. Meanwhile, independents continue to take market share.
Oh yes. Recently I ran across this item in the FAQ of Books Inc, a West Coast (and local to me) chain of bookstores…
https://www.booksinc.net/411
“We are not able to carry books from self-publishing platforms that have predatory pricing practices and are direct competitors to independent brick and mortar businesses such as Books Inc.”
So if you sell on Amazon and the like please don’t bother us …
“We have enough money already, thank you. Go to Amazon if you want a story we can’t order.” Sigh.
It’s an unfair joke, but still I wonder, “Businesses run by English majors?”
English majors? Starbucks was started around 1970 by an English teacher, history teacher and an author. In the mid-Eighties they sold out to Schultz, and that’s when the expansion started. Schultz was not an English major.
Statements like this make my head hurt. If bookstores are a good business to be in, why can’t a store with a long history in a community find a buyer? If bookstores are a good business to be in, why can’t they withstand an increase in commercial rent, hardly an uncommon occurrence?
Oh, and what the heck does “thriving” even mean, in the context of bookstores? Profitable? A place for the independently wealthy to virtue signal to their friends?
For many “thriving” = “not dead yet”.
For some it means business as usual.
I’m more curious about the uncertainty behind the quote: “I think that our sales went up or stayed the same,”.
What kind of well-run business can’t tell the difference between sales going up and staying the same?
>“thriving” = “not dead yet”
I’m curious to see what Barnes & Noble’s Q4 numbers look like. I’d heard that they were proud their sales were up 1.4% over last year’s holiday season. But that was after fairly big spending on an ad campaign. My suspicion is that they still lost money on the whole, but this way they can try to sell the business as having “positive sales”.
Here’s another very recent more nuanced article on the topic…
http://thepolitic.org/betting-on-books-can-the-indie-bookstore-revival-last/
This is the type of article where the term “fake news” really fits.
The American Booksellers Association distributes these talking points to their members and encourages them to place the story with their local news outlets. This is presented as “getting our story out”. The hope is that the message of increasing sales and “people prefer paper books” will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s the basic principle behind propaganda: repeat the same lie over and over until people finally believe it…
…or you go out of business.
“… until people finally believe it…
…or you go out of business.”
You mean ‘and you still go out of business’ because even believing it doesn’t mean most are going to waste their time searching shelves when the search on the computer works so much better/faster.
Yet another article zeroing in on tradpub and missing out on indy publishing.
Look, Ms. Piacentini, people are not choosing print books over ebooks because they like the feel of the book in their hand. It’s because publishers deliberately price ebooks higher than their hardcopy counterparts in a desperate attempt to make money and try to head off the epub revolution.
AAP? ABA? Aren’t those two of the ones that do their best to ignore Amazon and the books/ebooks it sells?
Another one of those things I’m gonna have to check Amazon for large saltlicks before trying to read it …