From TeleRead:
Perhaps the reason print book sales are on the rise has nothing to do with coloring books, digital fatigue, the “ebook fad” or book store appeal. Data Guy has offered a different reason based on the data he has scraped for Author Earnings.
To start, independent book store sales are up 5 percent from 2015, but the rest of the brick and mortar stores are down 5 percent, on average. However, the industry is up 15 percent as a whole with the difference coming from Amazon.
Data Guy states that the real reason print sales are up is because a change in how Amazon priced its titles. In 2015, discounts on ebooks for large traditional publishers was eliminated. In turn, Amazon discounted the prices of print books in mid-2015 – and that’s where we see the change in print sales.
To break down the data even further, when Amazon discounted sales in some of the spring and summers months, sale units on print books were up 7 percent. However, when it scaled back its discounts just a few short months later, the overall percentage of unit sales also dropped and at the end of the year, the industry saw an increase of just 3.3 percent from a year before.
Data Guy surmises that the question really shouldn’t be about print vs. digital. People want to read, and they are going to do it in ways that are easiest and convenient for them. This bigger question is brick and mortar vs. online sales. Online sales are ever increasing with Amazon taking the bulk of the sales.
Because we are currently seeing online sales wallop brick and mortar unit sales, he said about two-third of traditionally published adult books are bought online.
Link to the rest at TeleRead and thanks to Nate for the tip.
Our rural library system has seen a steady increase in the circulation of eBooks.
Our circulation for 2016 was a little under 2 million lends. For perspective, Chicago Public Libraries’ circulation was 10 million in 2016. We are not large but we are not microscopic either. Our customers are a mixture that varies from migrant farm workers to the faculty of one of the larger universities in the state. English as a second language classes are popular in several of our branches.
Our total circulation includes DVDs, digital and paper magazines and a few other dogs and cats, but predominantly books.
I only have numbers for Jan 2015-Jan 2016 in front of me. In January of 2015 total circulation was about 160,000, 8% digital. In December of 2016, total circulation was about 150,000 and 18% digital. Total circulation for 2016 was 1.9 million, 16% digital. 2016 circulation was up 4% from 2016. Paper circulation was down 4% for 2016, but digital circulation close to doubled.
I have a few observations. One, price is not a factor in the choice between ebooks and paper at the library. Both eBooks and paper are free at the library. Checkout convenience may be a factor, but our door counts have increased also, which suggests that customers are both visiting the library and borrowing ebooks. Second, the trend has been steady, almost a monotonic increase in digital percentage. Almost every month it goes up. Third, we were ecstatic to see a 4% increase in circulation. Previous years were flat or declining. Without digital, we would have had another year of decline.
Admittedly, ours is a small, regional sample, but in our county, it is clear that ebooks are on the rise, not decline and there is a strong suggestion that ebooks represent the future of literacy.
If I were a publisher, I would think about these numbers carefully. If reading is increasing, but only when books are available electronically, the future of publishing is in greater availability and quality of digital books.
Wow, thanks for sharing this!
Amazon wants to sell things. Period.
If they can’t discount the ebooks, they’ll get them by discounting the paperback. If they can’t discount the paperback, they’ll discount the hardback. If they can’t do any discounts while new, they’ll put up a little box on the product page asking if you’d like x.xx bucks to sell them your used copy.
They want to sell. People want to buy. Big5 needs to just make it easier for both of those things to happen.
This is why during the Hachette/Amazon negotiation incident many trad. pub. authors were complaining that Amazon dared sell their books at full price. The price stated by their publisher. And they whined that Amazon followed it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/business/as-competition-wanes-amazon-cuts-back-its-discounts.html
Hmmm, if those books were part of that ‘agency’ thingy the qig5 likes so much with ebooks, those pbooks would be even more. Perhaps the qig5 should lower their prices so Amazon and B&N will sell them for less.
There’s a thought, has B&N ever changed their discounts over the years?
Bookstores around here routinely discount off list.
If publishers reduced list prices by 33% and the discount to retailers from 50% to 30%, retailers would still earn the same on the reduced list price as they do on the discounted list price. Publishers would still earn the same per copy.
Booksellers would screech because the wouldn’t be able to slap big DISCOUNT stickers on the books.
ETA: Of course, since author royalties are based on list, authors would get paid less while everyone else holds steady.
“Booksellers would screech because the wouldn’t be able to slap big DISCOUNT stickers on the books.”
Which is what agency stopped Amazon from doing, discounting ebooks so that people would buy more of them and make everybody money.
“Of course, since author royalties are based on list, authors would get paid less while everyone else holds steady”
Funny how that game is played — isn’t it?
I can’t imagine what BPH does next. Are they just going to let B&N go the way of Borders? I don’t see any good move for them. If they start discounting ebooks themselves, then their own sales and profitability improves, but that’s no help to B&N.
Funny you mentioned Borders, I was doing some shifting of junk (that corner of the garage ‘collects’ things) and found a Borders Reward card that never been snapped out of the plastic page.
The big publishers became big because they ‘controlled’ most of what the readers could find to read. The internet started their lose of that control, but the up and coming online bookstores and then Amazon pulled the bottom out from under them.
The qig5 is between a rock and a hard place. They can’t compete one-on-one against indie/self-pub ebooks because their overhead is a lot lower. And they can’t save B&N, and that’s because anything they do to help B&N will help Amazon as well (and any games they play trying to help B&N while hurting Amazon will have them on the wrong side with the DoJ again.)
Since they can’t/won’t thin down (the upper management — not the little guys/gals they need someone that can edit and do cover art), and they still refuse to make their own websites more buyer friendly they will continue to sink.
At this point Amazon is actually helping prop them up — because (for now) it benefits Amazon customers.
once b&n goes down, amazon will
stop discounting paper-book titles,
and let the industry shoot itself…
first in the foot, then in the head.
-bowerbird
With Amazon selling more paper books by far than other outlets, shouldn’t Preston et al be circulating another monopoly petition for the DOJ?
Nah, he’d look the fool for trying to stop the place making him the most money — unless he thinks B&N will be making a comeback.
They’re waiting for someone to donate the Fedex fees to deliver it, Patricia.
Isn’t it just too bad the qig5 didn’t agency their print books when they did the ebooks? That way Amazon couldn’t save them from themselves. (I know they won’t, but I’d love to see Amazon ‘agency’ the qig5 pbooks for a month and watch the fur fly as the qig5 and the new papers try to make it Amazon’s fault that they’re selling pbooks at the price the qig5 set — just as they have to with ebooks. Poor PG wouldn’t get any ‘real’ work done with all the submissions offered. 😉 )
Makes sense people would buy online. The only “bookstores” that are within a 15 mile radius of me are Walmart and Target.
And their stock is pathetic. And expensive.
I can get a whole lotta ebooks for the price of one hardcover.
People want to read, and they are going to do it in ways that are easiest and convenient for them.
Susan left out “least expensive”, which was the point of the analysis.
I was thinking that price is always a factor. When one can buy the trade paperback (new) of a book cheaper than the ebook, one may decide that for less money they can get something physical that they can keep or sell besides still getting the same story…
I buy a lot of remaindered editions of the big guns like Child and Deaver and Kellerman because I like hardcovers and they’re cheaper. FWIW
I have to admit I have a hard time buying an ebook of a book that’s got a paperback or hardcover edition that’s cheaper.
When it’s a few cents, it’s easy to resist the physical edition, but when it turns into dollars… yeah, I buy the print, with the one exception being when I want the book and only right now will do.
I will pay more for the eBook because I get more value from it. The convenience factor trumps price differences.
Hardly a surprise – I’ve been saying we’d see this reported due to the steep discounts being provided on print versions of bestselling novels.