16 thoughts on “Lovers of print”

  1. “Simple (optional) query, Mr Sapp, that one third of your sales is it by net revenue or by volume? How do the margins compare? Don’t have to answer. Just think on it and how it might play out over time.”

    Great question. One-third by volume but one-half of sales.

    • Thanks for the anecdata.
      We already knew readers of Indie ebooks get significant savings against even the more enlightened tradpubs. If at the same time authors get a higher margin and B&M importance continues to degrade over time, all the leading indicators will point to a tighter economic squeeze for tradpub print, even with POD. Especially for the BPHs with that pesky overhead.
      Sooner or later the support of print over digital is going to become unsustainable.

      • And when that happens, the big publishers will lose their competitive advantage in eBook fiction. Paper is where the publishers have an unchallenged competitive advantage. Their eBook sales will no longer benefit from their paper promotion. There will be no paper to promote.

        Nonfiction paper will be sustainable as long as the popular, low transaction cost eReading software lacks tools to make it superior to old fashioned paper for a large segment of the market. Just for fun, as a thought experiment, imagine a full set of tools unhindered by copyright considerations.

        • For Academic use the software has existed for nearly two decades, 2003, to be precise. After ebooks hit the mainstream, it added the ability to import epub, to be treated like any document: read, index, annotate, etc.

          https://www.windowscentral.com/10-years-microsoft-onenote-one-place-all-your-notes

          It is used by millions.
          And has spawned dozens of competitors on iOS and Android.

          But publishers of academic material refuse to support it. Or its competitors, instead prefering app-locked and web-based “solutions” that limit what customers can do to essentially to what print allows. Allowing OneNote (or equivalent) to serve as a distributor woukd be trivial but it woukd be too useful to consumers. And undercut print and their cozy deals and kickback deals with universities and professors.

          Claiming the software doesn’t exist or is inadequate is a smoke screen.
          It has existed since the first affordable all-day tablets and laptops arrived.
          That’s okay…it’ll take a while but open textbook efforts will put them out of business eventually.

          Same story: adapt or perish.

          • As is, OneNote can import and display DRM-free epub:

            http://www.onenotegem.com/a/documents/onenote-batch//2019/1122/872.html

            Ditto for audio and video.
            From day one it has allowed students to record a class or meeting and synchronize notes to the audio or video. A few tech savvy profesors even distribute digital class notes to get students to listen and process the class instead if just transcribe everything without further thought.

            Tools exist.

            They just aren’t used to their full capability to protect the ways of the past.
            Give it time.

          • The software does indeed exist, and it’s not that challenging to write. But the transaction costs involved in consumer access and use are significant. Existence and an easy UX are two very different things.

            We don’t find those features using the Kindle or Apple systems.

            I agree time will provide far better features than we have today. And when it does, publishers will have a much harder time sustaining their nonfiction business.

            • Have you actually looked at OneNote?

              It supports keyboards, touch, and pen input with the best handwriting recognition out there. The UI rund on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops.

              Want to highlight a section? Click on the highlighter and swipe over the section.
              Want to annotate? Select the anotator. Click on the location. Type or handwrite. Click to hide or uncover.
              Want to share a snippet or quote? Select the snipping tool, highlight, and enter address to send or select from contact lists.
              What you see is what you get, nothing is hidden, nothing to memorize.

              The thing is 20 years old.
              It has been through two decades of usability live “testing” and updates and extensions.
              People live their professional lives in it.
              It’s not brain surgery.
              You don’t need a college degree to use it any more than a Kindle.

              And its not the only such app out there.

              As I said, if the publishers don’t want to evolve to meet changing customer needs they don’t have to.
              But they shouldn’t whine when others meet them and the customers go to them.

              • I believe One Note does all that. And I believe there are others. This is a situation where the the ability to do something does not directly translate to actually doing it.

                Convenience is a huge factor in marginal choices.

                Evolve? Amazon can add all the One Note features to Kindle. Amazon can meet consumer demand. Who needs publishers?

  2. It’s like maskers vs. non-maskers or Baptist vs. Methodists. How about we keep all three modes alive and well: print, e-book, and audio. I listen to about 50 audiobooks and read about 20 physical books per year and have done that for about the last ten years. I’ve read about 4 e-books total in all of that time. I love that they’re available and they’re a little over one-third of my sales.

    I just don’t like to read e-books and don’t think I ever will. It’s not a nostalgia thing. I’m totally paperless for my day job and writing career. When I read at night, I’m so done looking at screens. I find the paper relaxing. I like to quickly flip back and forth and look at photos or reference exhibits in non-fiction or reference that character’s name from several pages ago. I like shelving the book. I like the esthetic of my library.

    I don’t confuse the plate for the food. However, I don’t want to eat steak on a thing paper plate or drink my wine from a styrofoam cup. 😉

    • I’m not advocating the destruction of printed books, D.

      I have a bunch in my basement. I’ve previously donated several boxes to our local library, but think I’m done discarding any of the remaining volumes. A good friend has a library for home-schoolers and I think it likely that eventually she will receive all the remaining pbooks.

      Though I walk through the room that holds these books several time each day, I haven’t pulled one out to read or examine for a very long time.

      I do think that ebooks will continue to eat into pbook sales, however.

    • It’s not about actively destroying paper books; it is, however, about degrading the economics of bulk print runs over time.

      Print can endure indefinitely provided two caveats: 100% Print on demand and the public’s willingness stomach for books priced with fair margins for authors and retailers under niche market economics. The total market for tradpub has been stagnant all century and the BPH profits come from squeezing suppliers and production to the bone to accomidate the declining volume and margins. Now consider a strategy that purposefully deprecates sales volume of the highest margin format in favor the lowest margin format. How systainable is this over decades?

      What would the cover price of the tradpubbed print book be if it paid comparable royalties to Indies? Not necessarily equal but better than 1/5th (at best).

      Simple (optional) query, Mr Sapp, that one third of your sales is it by net revenue or by volume? How do the margins compare? Don’t have to answer. Just think on it and how it might play out over time.

      What will the indie vs tradpub split look in a few decades as the name legacy authors retire? And further down the road as their copyrights expire?

      When pundits like Negroponte of MIT proclaim ebooks will kill pbooks imminently they are ridiculously misguided. Copyrights are sticky. The tradpub business model has at least five decades to go.

      But when the literati proclaim that readers prefer print (which is actually irrelevant in addition to being speciously framed) they are ignoring that the supply chain (suddenly important these days) begins with the *authors*.

      Print vs digital sustainability isn’t about reader format preference but rather about author self-interest. Give it time.

      (Think about cars, internal combustion vs EV. Talk of all-EV by 2030 or even 2050 is delusional. 90% EV by 2070, though, is inevitable. Barring a big war, Carrington Event, or cometary strike.)

      Pundits always overestimate the hear term if disruptive technologies and vastly underestimate the lobg term impact.

      • Now consider a strategy that purposefully deprecates sales volume of the highest margin format in favor the lowest margin format. How systainable is this over decades?

        It isn’t sustainable over decades. It is, however, a rational approach to an orderly departure from print fiction. This would be a departure accompanied by as much cash as possible, and leaving a healthy balance sheet.

        “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.”
        Herbert Stein

          • As opposed to adjusting and staying in business as many other companies have done?

            That is exactly what they are doing. They are adjusting by dropping one product line and making as much as possible on the way out.

            All of the many companies that successfully navigated change did so by changing something. Each faced unique circumstances, and we have to look at them.

            Dropping a product line is often the best option if one seeks to remain profitable. There is no reason for publishers to insist on maintaining fiction when they see their competitive advantage evaporating.

            That doesn’t please authors.

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