Intresting...
Tim Waterstone, the founder of the Waterstone's book shop chain,
It would seem he is a little biased.
I've heard and read so many conflicting opinions on print vs e-publishing I don't pay much attention anymore.
A great deal of what's happened to the "big" publishers (Harper-Collins, Little Brown, Random House, etc., etc.) in the last 10 years is stupid stuff they did to themselves. While they were busy being insular, myopic and forever chasing after the next Grisham, Sparks or King, e-books slowly started to get a toe hold in the industry.
A good example of their stupidity is Random House shelling out $3.5 million advance for Lena Dunham's first book. Or the same publisher pushing Justin Cronin's "The Passage". He also got a big advance and the book blanketed the front windows and entrance to every B&N I walked thru in 2010.
A more astute question would be, has there been a decline in print readers?
One could also say there's been a sharp decline in CD sales the past 15 years* because of MP3, meanwhile vinyl's enjoying a resurgence. But that last part is mainly because people fetishize the analog medium the same way tactoids* do paper books.
Here's an excellent (and very long) piece in The New Yorker detailing the history of Amazon, their strongarm tactics, and the whole e-/p-publishing war.
* Less so with country music, because that audience skews older, and they buy at Walmart.
** I think I used that word wrong. But there's a similar word for people obsessed with tactile feel.
Thanks Gordon! I started to read that (I get the magazine) and was bogged down & didn't finish it. I like getting the background on these things.
I've noticed that about the vinyl surging in some circles in popularity, although I've got about 50 LPs (most in very good condition) that I'm going to give to charity because I can't find anyone who wants them for free otherwise.
I don't know if you used the word tactoid wrong, but I know I'm one.... :) I prefer hard copy-- guess I'm old-school.
@melmurphy: there's a little more to the story. Paper and printing costs have skyrocketed over the past 2 decades, and the publishing houses also felt a bite from the 2008+ recession. Many other costs have gone up, as well. What I hate about it all is that excellent unknown authors aren't getting a chance to be published as they had been in the past by the smaller imprints the big companies established and supported.
I'm afraid people aren't reading like they did, and the effect are being seen in other areas; for example, political races. Newspapers used to help contribute to intelligent debate about the candidates, and now their columns have been dumbed down to 1-4 minute reads in the loo. Even Slate gives an approximate amount of time it takes to read their top stories online. Are we all that pushed for time? Are our attention spans that small now that they compare with those of toddlers? I don't know the answer. I don't think it bodes well for our society, but maybe I'm just being pessimistic today.
"What I hate about it all is that excellent unknown authors aren't getting a chance to be published as they had been in the past by the smaller imprints the big companies established and supported.
I'm afraid people aren't reading like they did, and the effect are being seen in other areas; for example, political races. Newspapers used to help contribute to intelligent debate about the candidates, and now their columns have been dumbed down to 1-4 minute reads in the loo."
Agree with you 100%. Personally, I wonder if modern technology hasn't made me ADD. In the 80s and 90s when I was in my twenties, I had no problem going to a used bookstore, buying a small box of paperbacks and lugging them home. Then reading thru 80% of them within a week or two.
Now I just skim Salon and the rest of the crap that passes for "content" on the internet. I just had a very nice small online lit site pick up one of my stories. But honestly, how many people will sit and read an entire 3,500-5,000 word story on a website???
And regarding books, I was at a writer's group meeting in Seattle in 2010 and the dozen people there were pretty evenly split between the Kindle/e-reader fans and the luddite book owners like myself.
^ Well, I've got your back! I buy all my books at local booksellers (as well as almost everything else: groceries, hardware, prescriptions, etc., because I don't mind spending the extra little bit to patronize local businesses. I hope I'm not trying to live in the past; I think we all need to stretch our minds in every way possible to get the most out of life while we're here.
When reading I've used my computer/iPad to look up a reference if I don't have the hard copy available for (dictionary, etc.), but I write in the margins of my books, ask myself questions to ask other people, so on, so on. I like to consult other books the author has written to see if a metaphor is a continuing thing or a new one; yes, I'm a nerd. I love conversation, descriptions, people's inflections on certain phrases. I love learning new expressions and encountering new ideas, especially the ones that challenge my deeply held convictions. Yep, I'm a nerd, and a moderate or liberal, depending on what the definition of each is; it is an expandable scale.
Hey, melmurphy, let me know what you have in print, and I'll get it and read it! I promise. And good luck to you in your future works. :)
Um and btw, I have a great-grandfather from Ireland named Murphy, but over in the motherland that name is like Smith or Jones here, so we probably are not related, but even so: Cheers to you! -- and once again, tmi!
Thanks for posting the link to the article Gordon. I read most of it and then saved the rest for later. Wow, that scared me. I'm not gonna sleep good thinking about Amazon.
Interestingly, I was at a tiny presentation given at Hugo House in Seattle in 2011. A rep from Amazon was there, forget his name, along with a couple of published fiction writers and two local independant bookstore owners. Pretty much all they talked about was how Amazon was pushing indie publishers and self-published e-books to the back of the website.
Scary!
There does seem to be some evidence that people are reading less, but it seems the high point came later then many folks thought.
Stuff like this is why I think that print, as we know it, is dead/dying.
I'm not saying no one her age won't like print, but I think they'll like it the same way some of us like candles.
They aren't teaching cursive in a lot schools now, so handwriting may become a thing of the past; most people I know 35 and under print instead of write.
That little girl reminds me of a scene in a movie (it's the one where Kevin Kline comes out of the closet just before he's supposed to get married) where a young woman who's a model tries to use a dial-up phone by punching the holes in the rotary area.
