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No one buys books

yreg
109 replies
20h43m

I recently started buying paper books.

Yes, it's not particularly ecological, but I found that I'm able to focus at the text much better this way. My Kindle (despite plenty of obvious advantages) just doesn't really work for me.

It took me years to realize this, but I always start to tinker with the brightness settings, switch pages back and forth, go into the book library and back, play with highlighting words, etc. I will do anything instead of reading the text. Meanwhile with a paper book I don't have an urge to flip a page back and forth and observe how it behaves. I can focus on the text.

Not sure why I am this way.

roughly
21 replies
20h13m

I do the same - I far prefer paper books for reading, and mostly because it makes an enormous difference in my ability to focus.

Re: the ecological side - I'm not actually convinced that a paperback book is markedly more of an ecological burden than an e-reader and the rest of the associated infrastructure. I think it's possible the e-reader pencils out in the long term, but I think a full lifecycle accounting of the energy and resources required to create, use, and dispose of an e-reader would be markedly higher than one would suspect, and I think people replace them more often than necessary.

Books, on the other hand, are trees. Bury 'em in your yard when you're done with them and the fungi will know what to do to recycle them.

karmakaze
9 replies
19h51m

This is not good news. I just got my first eInk reader today and first thing I did was go through all the navigation setup pages.

I have one professional development book and was going find a work of fiction to start. Hope it works out.

Nifty3929
3 replies
19h43m

FWIW - This (GP post) is not my experience with eReaders. Not sure if they have the eInk one or not (like the Fire or tablet ones), but I have the eInk sort.

Anyway, I really like it because it's far lighter weight than a paperback, easier to hold, and I can have like the entire library on there and take it with me. I don't experience the distraction that they are referring to, because there's really not anything else to do except read my book. How much time can I spend on settings? Browsing my library? As far as brightness I leave it alone mostly and don't think about it unless it's irritatingly one way or the other.

I have no idea what "navigation setup pages" are - I've been through several different Kindles and I pretty much just take them out of the box and start reading. There's nothing to "set up" outside of logging into my Amazon account.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

jhbadger
1 replies
17h17m

Also, while I know the readership of HN skews young, but when you reach your 50s, having the ability to make the text larger in an ebook is a killer feature.

karmakaze
0 replies
16h36m

Yeah my vision is still good but farsighted so need low-strength reading glasses, larger fonts, or what I've started doing with this eReader is just getting good at reading fuzzy letters with a relaxed gaze at less than arms length. It's actually less straining than trying to force focusing closer than is comfortable.

I tried using landscape mode or larger fonts but didn't like the extra page scrolling/turning. Eventually I suppose we'll get lightweight and normal looking AR glasses for reading eBooks.

karmakaze
0 replies
16h40m

Thanks (everyone) for the replies and different viewpoints.

I already went through all the setup menus, including messing with fonts, layouts, making some collection/folders, and downloading some samples to preview.

So far it all seems pretty good. I don't think I'll be too distracted by it. The 7" screen is a tad small, but I really do like the size and weight so will keep it. Anything larger/heavier will likely not be kept on my person so loses a lot of use.

Another great use I just discovered is loading it with pdf's of all my device/appliance/toys manuals in a User Manuals collection.

antonyt
1 replies
19h28m

Chiming in with the others to say that my experience with e-readers has been great. Physical books can grow to be a huge burden over the years.

For me personally, e-readers have not caused any loss of focus. In fact, the integrated dictionaries often keep me MORE focused than the interruption represented by pulling out a dictionary or googling a word.

I'll acknowledge there is a tactile joy to physical paper that is lost when using an e-reader, but for me it's well worth the trade-off for the the portability and space saved.

Also consider that often, people who are expressing skepticism of digital reading have only ever tried it on laptops and iPads, which is a very different (more distracting) experience from an e-ink reader.

maximilianthe1
0 replies
18h14m

Another massive advantage to using Kindle estead of iPad - enourmous battery life. My like 6-8 year old Kindle survives what feels like a month without recharge with active use. This enables you to just drop it in your backpack and be sure that it works the next time you feel like reading.

sien
0 replies
17h6m

FWIW I got a Kindle in 2010 for a trip and found that I really liked it.

I also wound up inadvertently encouraging other people to get them.

Only one person out of about 6 who got them after I got them didn't use them. She didn't actually read much.

roughly
0 replies
19h39m

Everybody's different! I prefer to read on paper, I know many other people who prefer to read on their kindle. Whatever works for you is the right answer for you!

I still use ebooks when I travel - I'll usually have one or two actual physical books with me, but I'll also have a few loaded up on my iPad in case I get bored or finish them early.

WolfeReader
0 replies
19h39m

A lot of the posts here are just individuals' opinions, not universal experiences. Yours may well be different!

Personally, I carry an e-ink reader everywhere and read it every time I get a spare minute or so. It's done wonders for my reading habits. And unlike this topic's creator, I basically set the font and formatting once and almost never mess with them again.

johnloeber
6 replies
19h5m

Worrying about the environmental impact of books is misguided. You use far more paper products in the course of your everyday life: paper bags, cardboard packaging, paper towels, etc. etc. Even for an avid reader, the impact is negligible.

LargeWu
5 replies
16h31m

With paper books I'm more concerned with having to have space to put it when I'm done. But, I find it more enjoyable to read a physical book, and am more likely to re-read it.

shiroiushi
1 replies
14h18m

Another nice thing about paper books is that you can lend them out to your friends when you're finished reading them. This saves a bit of space, plus your friends can just pick them up and read them without worrying about a bunch of BS like whether it's compatible with their e-reader, if the DRM will work, if the publisher will revoke the rights for some reason, etc.

drewzero1
0 replies
12h11m

Or give them away, or leave them in a little free library for someone else to enjoy. In my old neighborhood somebody else had similar taste in scifi and (as far as I could tell) we traded Asimov books back and forth through the book box in the park!

I'd love to keep them all forever but (a) I think my house is about maxed out on shelves and (b) a book's potential is wasted on the shelf.

wodenokoto
0 replies
11h24m

Get the ebook for archival purpose and ditch the paper book when you’re done with your first read through.

If you later find out you want the paper book as home ornament, then spend a little extra to decorate your home.

The two major mistakes we make about books is:

1) we think we have to finish it. No, drop it if it’s boring.

2) we think we have to keep it around. No. Take a picture and write a few notes for your personal blog if you need to keep track. You don’t need it in your room or house.

throwaway598
0 replies
3h24m

Sell them 2nd hand. I mainly buy 2nd hand and sell 2nd hand.

gr8r
0 replies
10h47m

If I cannot/need not re-read a book, I could get rid of it and have more space. Tho the gain feel very tiny compared to the rest of the hoarded stuff.

AlbertCory
3 replies
18h31m

The undeniable minus of a Kindle e-reader is: the illustrations suck. They're just too small. Half the time, my "library" has book covers that I can't even make out.

WalterBright
2 replies
17h6m

That's why a retina display ipad is now my preferred reader.

randcraw
0 replies
3h20m

Yeah, I've owned a e-paper Kindle for a decade but probably never finished reading a book on it. Instead I use a iPad 11 or mini, which are superior in every way (that I care about) except reading in sunshine. I love how lightweight the Kindle is, but not its small reading area or lack of color or weak illumination. Or its inability to serve any task other than reading ebooks.

johnnyanmac
0 replies
15h27m

Yeah, I have a nice Galaxy tab for a mix of art and ebook reading.

I slightly prefer physical books and still collect them, but a tablet lets carry dozens on the road

echelon_musk
18 replies
20h38m

The older I get the less I trust myself to know how to administer or even to care how to work any current or future reading e-device.

A printed book requires light as just about it's only dependency!

I definitely agree with you about the distractions of digital devices. Switching to a book is a focused mode.

ethbr1
7 replies
20h26m

When I'm on vacation, I always read paper books.

Because I want minimal complexity. (Usually in the tropics, often with rum and a hammock)

Dead tree books' short term failure modes are water and fire, and once failure is confined to emergencies-that-are-already-emergencies they impose no additional cognitive burden.

Also, I suspect the physical friction involved in "swiping away from" paper books helps reset my dopamine baseline / memory, but that's just suspicion from having lived pre-smartphone.

PS: Also, re: environmental impact. eBay and Amazon sell tons of used books. Sure you're shipping them around, but I really buy new these days.

AlotOfReading
5 replies
19h22m

You forgot the third and fourth failure modes: weight and bag space. Books take a lot of it. An e-reader is thinner than any book and weighs the same no matter how many it's holding.

I used to take my e-reader on field expeditions when I was an archaeologist. Never had one die or break even after months in places like Siberia. The number of notebooks that were ruined during those same expeditions is non-zero, usually from condensation or the physical trauma of a backpack.

TheCapeGreek
4 replies
13h10m

Considering you're on HN, it's likely a safe bet to say you also travel with a laptop. In which case, an e-reader is still a waste of space because your laptop can just open ebooks too. Or if you don't, then your phone is still a better space saver for reading books with. Yet, you will likely prefer to take your e-reader with anyway (and its charger if it isn't the same as other devices).

This is why I find "saving space during travels" a very relative argument to make, because it's clearly down to preference.

BoringTimesGang
1 replies
9h0m

My laptop and phone can't last through a long-haul flight. My e-reader doesn't need charging until I come home, fits in a jeans pocket and is a similar weight to my passport.

TheCapeGreek
0 replies
8h59m

That's kind of my point - your preferences are to the advantage of the e-reader. For others, the same might apply to physical books instead, despite the disadvantage of bulk.

theshrike79
0 replies
9h0m

The ergonomics on any laptop is dogshit compared to a dedicated e-ink reader. Just the amount of brightness the display beams to your face makes it suboptimal for reading in low light.

And the "charger" I need with my ancient Kindle is a standard micro-USB cable, not exactly exotic. And as soon as this one breaks down, the next one will be USB-C like a good 90%+ of my devices I travel with.

AlotOfReading
0 replies
3h17m

Of course it's a relative argument. Everything is.

I don't personally travel with a laptop unless I plan on working remote. Too heavy/bulky and more importantly, you need to take them out going through TSA. The e-reader doesn't need a charger for the 2-4 weeks I usually travel. If I'm traveling longer, I'll bring a single additional USB cable (that will go away the next time I upgrade).

A phone doesn't take bag space because it's always in my pocket, but it's significantly less ergonomic and much less power efficient for reading. The value-add of being able to read without draining battery on my most important travel tool is worth it on its own.

dripton
0 replies
19h40m

I'm just the opposite. One of the worst things about vacations was having to carry along all those books or take a detour to a bookstore (if there were any) to buy more. Now I just carry a single small e-reader. It's a great savings in terms of cargo space.

I don't consider an e-ink reader very complex. You charge it once in a while, download books to it once in a while, and otherwise it's basically a book except it remembers what page you were on.

hollandheese
6 replies
18h54m

E-readers are often very simple devices. Their main audience is older people.

Light being a dependency of reading a printed book is one of the biggest plus for e-ink readers. You don't need light, they already come with it! It's so much easier reading with a Kindle (in dark mode) at bed time than it is a paper book.

Tor3
4 replies
14h45m

Well, yes and no.. I do use the backlight on my Kindle if it's dark, but this changes how it looks. I have a Paperwhite Kindle. With the backlight on it's more like reading on LCD, though not as bad. The Kindle looks much nicer if I can use a bedside lamp instead of the backlight, just as I would with a paper book.

nottorp
3 replies
11h32m

You still can't turn off the light on a Kindle completely can you? Always felt like a waste of battery on a beach...

Tor3
1 replies
10h17m

There's a tiny amount of light, yes. I don't know why Amazon made it that way. It's not really visible.. not to me, at least. But it's probably one reason the battery is slowly drained, over weeks, even if not in use.

nottorp
0 replies
9h21m

It does turn off when you're not using the kindle. But you can't turn it completely off while reading.

I suppose the use case is picking up the kindle at night in a dark room while you disabled the light when you were reading outside during the day.

wizzwizz4
0 replies
1h38m

If you put it in / out of sleep mode juuuust right, you can trigger a bug (race condition?) where it doesn't turn the backlight on.

BoringTimesGang
0 replies
8h57m

And when you read lying on your side, no awkward holding for the nearside pages!

criddell
2 replies
20h19m

The older I get, the more I appreciate being able to select a larger font with my Kindle. I love books, but the accessibility features of a modern ereader are pretty great too.

echelon_musk
0 replies
19h46m

I've been putting off glasses for as long as I can. I suspect I'll return to my Kindle again in the future for this reason. It's good to be reminded that both things can coexist.

Tor3
0 replies
14h48m

The ability to select a font size I like is one of my main three reasons for using a Kindle.

wenc
9 replies
15h7m

I read paper books because I can flip back and forth without friction, and I can underline and scribble.

I don't know why eReader interfaces make these two functions -- critical for deep reading -- so difficult.

Kindle is optimized for linear reading only. So beach reading and long romances.

But if you do the kind of reading that Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" proposes (skimming, inspectional reading, writing notes), you pretty much can't with Kindles.

astura
2 replies
13h25m

WTF is "deep reading?"

vunderba
0 replies
12h41m

It's likely some arbitrary jargon that someone made up. I have my own method of reading, which since we're throwing out pretentious flowery prose, I'm going to call "predictive perusal".

For each chapter or titled section, I read the first sentence or title and then mentally position myself as the writer of that section and attempt to predict the contents. For convergence I attempt to traverse further plies. For divergence, I attempt to figure out the root of the difference.

EDIT: For the record, I have never felt the need to scribble in the margins of a book. It's far better to take notes on separate media to prevent "preloading" your existing thoughts at the time should you choose to re-read the book years later.

WolfeReader
0 replies
13h3m

This link will help you understand: https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=deep%20reading

You can take a similar approach for other words and phrases you don't know, too!

nottorp
1 replies
11h35m

Looks like you don't read books for entertainment?

I believe the original article wasn't about technical/self improvement etc books.

wenc
0 replies
1h35m

I do read for entertainment, but I’m talking about reading to learn (very common use case) rather than reading fiction.

I don’t take notes when I’m reading fiction like “A Man Called Ove”. But I do take notes and flip back and forth when I’m reading say Girard.

kstrauser
1 replies
14h28m

I truly don’t mean to be pedantic, but there’s a giant implicit “for me” in there. I do not want or need to scribble or write in my books for “deep reading”. It’s totally fine if you want to, but that’s your preference and not a general requirement everyone has.

I just finished “Moby Dick” on a Kobo. It’s no “Ulysses”, thank heavens, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it as a long romance or a beach read.

wenc
0 replies
1h39m

I think Moby Dick is a romance. I guess the term is confusing in English because people think “love story” but an older use of the word just means a novel with adventure, chivalric elements.

There is also a giant implicit “for me” in your preference. It just happens that your preference happens to be one that is mainstream. A lot of types of reading are not linear —- for instance, if you have to read to write a book report, you have to go back, make notes, flip back and forth. A straight through reading will not produce a good book report.

I read non-fiction and also great books (of the western canon) and in order to really read to understand, I need to flip back and forth and take notes and engage with the text. My reading instructor always tells me, “good reading is re-reading.” Single pass reading works for entertainment reading, but not for deep reading. (By deep reading, I mean the kind of reading that is taught in Mortimer Adler’s book referenced above)

For deep reading you have to interact with the text, most commonly by debating with it in the margins. This is pretty standard for academic reading (say when taking a humanities or literature class). It’s a pretty common use case that eReaders don’t support.

steve1977
0 replies
12h34m

This is interesting, I'm pretty much the opposite. I only read paper books if there are no electronic versions available.

Fiction I read on a Kindle.

My deep reading all happens on a PC actually. Not even a tablet. I find it much easier to highlight and annotate reading material with mouse and keyboard and look up references with a proper multi-window screen.

Also, while you certainly can underline and write notes on paper, this information then stays on paper and in this book. No way to index it easily, no way to cross-reference etc.

chrismcb
0 replies
14h15m

While you can scribble, you can easily highlight and comment on books. Going back and forth is maybe slightly harder than a book, but it isn't "so difficult." I'm not saying reading on a Kindle is better than a paper book. But I didn't think it is as bad s you claim it is. I personally like it because I can read anywhere. I don't need to carry a large heavy book around.

iamacyborg
9 replies
20h39m

Paper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections.

I can skim through a shelf full of books in a way that I’m just not able to with ebooks, even with stuff like full text search available in Calibre.

SubmarineClub
4 replies
20h8m

Another benefit to paper books, in my experience, is it's a lot easier to remember the rough location of a particular passage (towards the front, middle, near the end, etc.) than with digital

A progress bar really doesn't replace the context of the stack of pages behind and ahead of your current page.

UncleOxidant
1 replies
18h52m

It's pretty easy to highlight passages with most e-reader software. Some even let you write a note that goes with the highlight. You can then look through a list of all highlighted passages.

Tor3
0 replies
14h55m

It's when something comes up and you remember that you read something relevant in the past. In most of those cases it's not about "Ah, this is something I may want to check again at a later time, so let's highlight it". So, there's no list of highlighted passages to search through.

Indeed this is one of those things I miss about paper books. When the above happens I have a terrible time finding that on my Kindle. Most of the time I'm not able to, while with a paper book I didn't have that problem, mostly.

maximilianthe1
0 replies
18h8m

While physical "progress bar" is much easier to remeber than digital one (on the side of the screen for pdfs), because you actually interact with it the whole time, i don't find (ha) finding a particular passage hard without it. I personally usually can remeber a phrase or just a word and search for them in a PDF to find the needed passage.

dhosek
0 replies
16h41m

My own personal anecdata on this comes from being able to find a passage I read in a 500-page book in 1992 for a class I was taking in 1998. I could probably even find that same passage now if I were to walk across the room to the bookcase where I have that book.

Although on the other hand, I was also able to turn up an article I’d read online a couple years later when it was relevant to a friend’s relationship with her newly out trans kid, but it was definitely a different sort of recall and lookup happening in the latter case.

wolverine876
1 replies
18h44m

Paper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections.

Whatever works for you, of course. PDFs have bookmarks, which instantly take me to a specific spot on a specific page. Also, I can open multiple instances of the PDF, viewing multiple pages of the same book (or some PDF readers allow split screens to do the same thing). Edit: And if I don't recall where something is, I can search for it.

Tor3
0 replies
14h51m

I prefer PDFs for informative material (various documentation), though they're less useful if it's just a photocopied old manual (no OCR).

It's when reading books (literature, not documentation) that the e-readers have something going for them. I read nearly all my books on the Kindle, but I never use it for documentation - I've tried, that's just cumbersome. PDFs on a PC are fine.

skydhash
0 replies
19h59m

I classify skimming as a "distracting" activity. I always ask myself: What information do I need? And then it's very easy to get to the relevant passage. And outlines are there for a reason (PDF Expert can edit them) so navigating between the same file is not that cumbersome for me. I do agree that the experience is more pleasant with a paper book, but in a focused session, the result is pretty much the same.

Skimming is great for building a mental map, but that is a separate activity than reading to learn. And it can be done digitally too, just differently.

Ferret7446
0 replies
17h26m

That's a software choice issue. You can definitely flip through digital texts more easily than physical. With a decent monitor, you can flip through multiple books at the same time which is quite difficult to do with physical books, assuming you haven't summoned eldritch appendages to help.

somenameforme
7 replies
14h38m

Another nice benefit of paper is that the company that sold it can't just bust down your door, steal the book, drop off a few bucks, and then go back along their merry way. Amazon did exactly this with, amongst other books, 1984. Such a perfectly appropriate book.

lannisterstark
2 replies
13h36m

I don't think they can do that with my calibre, and calibre-web collection lol.

lithiumii
1 replies
12h48m

But if you accidentally exposed your calibre-web online, they may be able to DMCA you?

theshrike79
0 replies
9h10m

If someone a) finds my calibre-web installation on the public internet b) manages to crack my username and password to log in c) scan the contents d) notify the correct rights holders e) send a subpoena for pirating content

...they can get my money.

kstrauser
1 replies
14h26m

None of my ebooks are infected with DRM. Lots of online stores will sell you ebooks without that nonsense.

GolfPopper
0 replies
14h6m

And if they won't, there are ways to pay for a copy (in whatever way most benefits the author), and then then get your DRM-free copy.

fragmede
1 replies
14h24m

You've got to wonder what the hapless Amazon employee asked to implement this felt, and how much leeway they had in which book for that to happen to first.

wizzwizz4
0 replies
1h42m

I expect it's all on George Orwell. Numbers sort before letters.

tombert
6 replies
13h51m

I am kind of the opposite; I have found it much easier to read on Kindle simply because I can make the text as big as I want.

In high school, I remembered that I really struggled to read The Once and Future King, and I never finished it. I eventually assumed I was too dumb to understand it, and that it’s just not for me.

Fast forward about 13 years, and I decide to give the book a try again, this time on the Kindle, and I surprisingly was able to get through it really quickly and didn’t have any issues understanding it.

I don’t think that I’ve gotten appreciably smarter than I was in high school, and I realized that the only really different variable is the font size. As a teenager I was reading my dad’s hand me down copy, which had tiny text on fairly small pages. With the Kindle I make the font gigantic. I have to turn the page more often, but that doesn’t really bother me.

Overwhelmingly I find it easier to read stuff if the text is really big; I am not sure why. My eyesight is fine, and I am not dyslexic (I was tested as a teenager), but tiny text is just really hard for me to read, while big text isn’t.

kaashif
1 replies
13h7m

I realized that the only really different variable is the font size.

Didn't you say you're 13 years older than last time?

tombert
0 replies
5h42m

From a “ability to comprehend it” level, I don’t think that that matters all that much. 16 year old me could read just fine.

avar
1 replies
10h5m

Yes, surely the only reason you'd dislike something at 14-18 years old and like it at 27-31 is the font size.

I take it your tastes have otherwise been immutable in that time period, and that you listen to the same music, follow the same fashion trends etc. as you did back then?

tombert
0 replies
5h43m

I didn’t say that they were immutable, but from a comprehension level I don’t think that things have changed substantially. Is it really controversial that bigger fonts are easier for me to read?

I thought I made that pretty clear, that it was that I was having trouble parsing and understanding the small text.

ETA:

Also, lol, my tastes in music really hasn’t changed either. Looking at my YouTube music history, the last 40 songs I listened to were ones I listened to in high school. I also wear more or less the style clothes; I still have of the shirts I wore back then actually.

tiptup300
0 replies
5h41m

Note that only having a certain chunk of text on the screen at one time may be a variable as well as the age/life-place difference as others have so politely hinted at.

theshrike79
0 replies
9h9m

I am kind of the opposite; I have found it much easier to read on Kindle simply because I can make the text as big as I want.

This and the fact that the kindle is _exactly_ where I left it, no need for physical bookmarks.

skydhash
3 replies
20h13m

I use my iPad and my Kobo for digital reading. I have paper version of "important" books (stuff I'd like to read if I don't have power), but some are unwieldy (Algorithms by Cormen et Al).

I prefer e-ink for reading, but it's too slow for my learning workflow. I highlight and mark interesting stuff, that I export later to condense and reflect upon. And that is cumbersome on an e-reader. There's also the matter of size. I generally like the PDF version of technical books as they're typeset well, but my e-reader is too small for them. So I use my iPad for those (Distraction is handled by the fact that I read those in short focused sessions).

But for fiction books, the e-reader is perfect. I don't highlight text in those books, I just read. Any other operation is slow enough that I just can't fiddle with it. And it's perfect for long sessions of reading as it does not project light in my eyes. It's light, so I just bring it with me everywhere.

alexpetralia
2 replies
20h3m

I recommend the Fujitsu Quaderno. Great for marking up textbooks on A4 size pages, and far lighter than a book itself.

wolverine876
0 replies
18h43m

Will you be able to read those textbooks and markups in 10 or 20 years, if Fujitsu stops making Quadernos?

Koshkin
0 replies
19h40m

An Apple-esque expensive stuff. (A pen sheath, $32.)

endgame
3 replies
19h2m

On top of all of that, nobody's going to revise the book out from under me while I'm reading it, or prevent me from loaning it to a friend, or even yanking it entirely from my device.

kubanczyk
0 replies
7h4m

Let me introduce you to two of my best friends: Airplane Mode and USB cable.

Tor3
0 replies
14h40m

As far as I know (in the sense that I've never experienced anything like it in a decade of using a Kindle) that the book's getting revised from under me while I'm reading it. There's an occasional update for some books, but I have to actively choose to download the updated version, otherwise my original stays the same. I think I've only downloaded an updated version a single time.

BoringTimesGang
0 replies
8h48m

Reading ebooks doesn't mean submitting to Amazon's ecosystem.

duderific
2 replies
19h20m

I have a slightly different problem. What I miss about the physical book is its context - that is to say, the cover art, its particular weight, the font face, how the chapter numbers are printed, etc., which give a book its certain "feel." With an e-book, you don't get any of that, so all books have a kind of sameness.

hollandheese
0 replies
18h51m

Well you can get the cover art, but yeah. I mean you can get the differing font faces and etc. if the publisher built that into the file, but most don't go to that amount of effort on their e-books.

beautron
0 replies
13h8m

I feel this strongly. Physical books make a deeper impression in my memory. There are all sorts of particularities of how the book was bound: it's size, it's smell, the texture of the paper, etc. It's like the book exists in its own unique space (vs all digital books existing in the single shared space of my computer/reader). I think a book's reading environment loses some richness when all these subtle little details are homogenized.

hintymad
1 replies
18h43m

Same here. I'm not sure if it's psychological. When reading my Kindle, I have to constantly fight my urge to do something else, maybe except for reading a page-turner novel.

jprete
0 replies
17h12m

That's exactly why I get paper books. An e-reader is too much like a smartphone and I start circling the UI looking for distractions.

zymhan
0 replies
13h59m

Who cares about the ecological impact of buying a book?

You have missed the forest for the trees.

zem
0 replies
15h47m

exact opposite for me - the more i got into ebooks, the harder i found it to handle the ergonomics of paper books, and today my reading is pretty much 100% on my phone or kindle.

petre
0 replies
14h46m

Yes, it's not particularly ecological

As if food packaging is particulary ecological, but we continue to order food, eat takeaway and processed food reliant on packaging.

I also buy paper books. Cheap paperback ones.

Books can easily be recycled as opposed to food packaging which mostly ends up in landfills or litters the environment.

nate
0 replies
19h3m

Same. I recently got one of these wirecutter book lights: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/glocusent-reading... Does an amber color for bedtime reading, and now I' tearing through books again. It's so much easier to skim, skip, re-find something (yes, even without fancy search) and I just find myself reading faster with real books again. It's rekindled :) a love of books again I feel like I lost somehow only doing it on e-readers.

mrweasel
0 replies
7h48m

It's also more ... social perhaps. I'm reading a book that an uncle bought, but never really got around to reading. I would have never picked up that book myself, but he brought it over an I stuck it in the bookshelf.

Similarly my dad has a bunch of books I bought years ago. It's not books that I'd want to re-read, but interesting enough. With ebooks that just not possible, unless you do some cumbersome DRM removal.

There's a lot of good things about ebooks, but the usability just isn't there yet. It is a nice alternative for long out of print books though.

I'd buy and read move, I think, if more stuff was translated to Danish, but most of the books you can get in Danish easily is repetitive crime novels. It's all variations of someone got brutally murdered and now some alcoholic Scandinavia cop / ex-cop with a broken love life has to solve the case for some reason.

maxerickson
0 replies
15h27m

Paper is probably not the place you are going to be able to make your most significant marginal impact.

m463
0 replies
19h14m

I found that I change the font size/lighting depending on time of day, which is harder to do with a paper book :)

jxramos
0 replies
1h44m

Yes, there's a strange habit with things we can twiddle and the surface area for twiddling physical books is much more limited and less engaging than with electronic devices.

There's something to dedicated physical entities being single purpose and dead end that allows them to serve you in a very focused manner. Things with more bells and whistles, knobs and pulls will simply draw you into their twiddling even when it serves no purpose. It's like working with these things creates an itch that we need to scratch and it is distracting even if the recovery for focus for those things is minimal, it all adds up and gets you out of the focus state.

jszymborski
0 replies
15h5m

I've been buying used books from local booksellers and betterworldbooks.com when I can't find them locally.

Seems like a fair compromise to me re: ecological impact.

jhatemyjob
0 replies
16h15m

This was my opinion until I got the Kindle Scribe, turns out the Kindle was too damn small

hoseja
0 replies
10h22m

What goes on in your head that you even consider the "ecologicity" of a book. It has no impact. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Stop feeling guilty about meaningless things.

globular-toast
0 replies
10h33m

I'm the opposite. I stopped reading books because I was accumulating too many and it was difficult to find the ones I like without paying full price for new copies (which I'd eventually just discard). Also I find them cumbersome. Now I have a Kobo I read a lot. I can read on my side in bed. It's great.

However, paper is still the best format by far for text books and references. I can't stand having to use a screen for that. If I'm using a reference sheet I always print it out.

dotnet00
0 replies
13h35m

I haven't had much trouble focusing on reading on computers, my only expectation is for the device to be touch screen and a pressure sensitive pen. The touch screen makes moving through pages trivial (for casual reading on say, my kindle, I have the habit of laying back and just tapping with my nose to flip pages lol) and the pen makes it trivial to mark up more serious reading material. With paper books I tend to not be near them right when I need them, and tend to be too wary of just marking them up. With digital stuff, and all the syncing we have between devices these days, I pretty much always have multiple devices at hand where the material is accessible.

I do still prefer physical books for things like art, I find it easier to study it and understand how it's put together that way (maybe because a physical copy forces me to look at the piece as a whole, rather than getting distracted by and overfocusing on minute details that turn out to not matter until I grasp the whole structure). However, even there, once I do understand how to look at the art, I can go with the digital version just fine.

datascienced
0 replies
13h24m

Yes plus the emotion of sitting on a couch with a paper book vs. a device is very different. The feeling of flicking pages is better than the UI of book readers or smart phones.

bhhaskin
0 replies
13h5m

Honestly it is likely more ecological than ebooks after you factor in everything. Think about how many e-readers are sitting in the bottom of a landfill somewhere. Screens, batteries, plastic shells. The energy to not only power the device but all of the infrastructure for transmitting and storing the book.

antod
0 replies
14h5m

> Yes, it's not particularly ecological

If it makes you feel better, just think of your bookshelf as a carbon sequestration facility.

acchow
0 replies
20h39m

These sound like common traits for ADHDers.

Tor3
0 replies
15h29m

I prefer to read paper books, but there are three reasons I generally don't. a) Font size is getting too small for me. Years ago I changed to large hardcover (sometimes large but softcover) versions instead of the smaller-sized books I used to buy, simply because the fonts are larger then. With the Kindle I can set the font size to what I want. b) Weight and size. I read on airplanes, in hotels etc. I read a lot and I read fast, so I bring more than one book (and even that is too big and heavy, see a). The Kindle is king here. c) Storage. I don't have enough room for more books at home. I've sadly had to dump lots and lots and lots of books, even though I like to read the same books again (and again). Tried to sort out those most unlikely to get re-read, but.. I can't even give them away. Used-book stores have more than they can handle.

As to the Kindle - I've never felt any urge to tinker with anything, except when I'm forced to: I set the font size, that's one single operation, forget it (at least for that book). If I occasionally read at night I have to add some backlight. And that's about it. I just read.

What I miss about paper books is the nice cover (color..), how easy it is to "see" the book (bookmarks, flip it open somewhere else and so on). In addition to actually reading it. But the Kindle is actually very nice to read (unlike phones, PC monitors, tablets, all of that. I can't ready more than a couple of paragraphs on LCD displays)

AndyMcConachie
0 replies
2h52m

Last Saturday I went to the bookstore, bought a paperback novel, and then went home and started reading it right away. It felt great and it reminded me of doing this in the past as I used to do this a lot in the past, but for some reason I had stopped.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts now, and that really cuts into my book reading. But nothing beats sitting down in the sun and reading a good paperback.

127
0 replies
12h6m

Paper is a carbon sink. As long as you don't burn them, the carbon will stay in the book.

grepLeigh
105 replies
14h54m

From the article:

>> "Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want?"

I sincerely hope nothing "disrupts" public libraries in my lifetime. As a California resident, I can walk into ANY public library in the state and get a free library card with access to physical books, audiobooks, ebooks. Some branches have laptops, hotspots, tablets, e-readers available to borrow. My local branch even has a Makerspace with 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and other misc tools.

yellow_postit
48 replies
14h42m

It’s funny seeing this comment and the article about Seattle libraries reducing digital copies both on HNews front page at the same time.

I love libraries.

It also feels like all our public institutions in the US are crumbling under assault from all sides.

ddingus
29 replies
11h47m

They are. Every single public resource is seen as a potential market opportunity being squandered away, or as competition other players do not want to see in play.

atoav
28 replies
10h56m

Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money.

If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want.

Sadly many people seem to think they are really showing the folks up there by retreating from any form of self-education once they are out of school. The opposite couldn't be more true.

Zenzero
14 replies
9h29m

Well a library is a place where a population can spend the day getting smarter while not spending money. If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want.

This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued.

The assault on public institutions like libraries comes from 2 places: 1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.

loup-vaillant
11 replies
6h16m

> [Rich & powerful assholes often maintain their status by unethical means.]

This is conspiracy level thinking.

The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing (latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists, reportedly a very conservative lower bound), and who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status?

I don't know about libraries specifically, but the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold is not conspiracy thinking to me, it's just obvious.

I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people. Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth. In fact, I fully expect to find many more assholes among super-rich people than I would among the general population. (But I'm not sure either: the strife we find among some of the poorest people also tend to generate assholes…)

bumby
8 replies
5h53m

The irony is that one of the largest contributions to the public library system was one of the richest guys ever. Carnegie funded over 2500.

loup-vaillant
7 replies
5h42m

You do realise you're not contradicting anything I've just said, right?

Quoting myself, "I am of course not denying the existence of nice rich people".

bumby
6 replies
5h18m

But then you go on to say,

Though I'm afraid they tend to be selected out of ludicrous wealth.

The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries. Whether or not he was simply an outlier, I think that’s an important thing to point out.

Further, some data suggests that as much as 5% of the general population are narcissists. So collectively, your point seems to be that rich people are pretty much like the rest of us, just with more money.

loup-vaillant
5 replies
4h23m

But then you go on to say,

I said "tend to". A tendency does not make an absolute and complete genocide. I also said "I'm afraid", which is supposed to convey some level of uncertainty. Carnegie's donation doesn't invalidate my point, even if he wasn't an outlier.

The irony is that one of the most ludicrously wealthy people in history was also probably the single largest contributor to public libraries.

Where you see irony, I see expected statistics: the largest contributor to pretty much anything has to be ludicrously rich. Because the only way to give that much, is to own even more.

And I will add that one incentive for rich people to donate is their public image. And in many cases their "donations" are largely neutered by tax cuts or by increasing the return on some of their other investments (basically their donations causing other of their investments to increase their returns). Donations by rich people aren't always genuinely generous.

bumby
4 replies
3h41m

What evidence would it take to change your mind? Because it seems like you'll rationalize any outcome to fit your mental model.

If the wealthy don't fund something, it's because they're narcissists. If they do, it's because of statistics. At the same time, you ignore the statistics about narcissism.

loup-vaillant
3 replies
3h13m

If the wealthy don't fund something, it's because they're narcissists. If they do, it's because of statistics.

I said no such strawman, and it's not my main point anyway.

My main point is: the idea that rich & powerful people will generally do what it takes to stay rich & powerful is not conspiracy thinking, it's common sense. The idea that a sizeable proportion of them will resort to unethical (even lethal) means to do so is not conspiracy thinking, it's common sense.

That's it, and I don't think Mr Carnegie here provides any significant evidence to the contrary. I mean, the same guy reportedly had strikers shot and killed, didn't he? It's hard to believe such a guy donated large amounts of money out of the goodness of his heart.

bumby
2 replies
2h41m

You did say they want to remain high status, likely due to their over indexing in narcissism. Even if that’s not your main point, the logical leap that we seem to disagree on is that promoting illiteracy is the means to that end. Carnegie does provide evidence against that, as does all the libraries and educational buildings that are named for wealthy donors.

There’s a philosophical argument that all altruism is actually selfish in nature, so I don’t think your premise holds that the wealthy are unique in this regard. What you seem to be saying is that they are complicated just the same as everyone else, just with more resources. If your only point is that wealthy people are status-minded, I don't disagree. I disagree that they are uniquely status-minded. As William Storr's work attests, we are all status-driven apes, whether wealthy or not.

You also didn’t answer the question about what it would take to change your mind, which is usually indicative of a dogmatic, rather than reasoned, position.

loup-vaillant
1 replies
35m

You did say they want to remain high status, likely due to their over indexing in narcissism.

Quote me, or I didn’t.

bumby
0 replies
5m

The prevalence of assholes is a documented thing...latest numbers I've heard was over 6% of clinical narcissists...who would ever be surprised that high-status people like being high-status?...the idea that rich assholes would like to keep the education level of the general population below a threatening threshold...it's just obvious."

Feel free to clarify, but to me, this reads as an overly verbose version of "Rich people, being narcissists, will try to maintain their high status via keeping the education level of the general populace low."

It also reads as a narrative talking point without good evidence to support it. I.e., "I can't prove it, I just know it's true."

kiba
1 replies
4h30m

Why would that be obvious? It seems more likely that they don't care about libraries.

loup-vaillant
0 replies
4h21m

Can you precise what "that" is referring to?

teitoklien
0 replies
7h57m

Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued.

They dont sit around scheming, they work, walk around doing it in action.

Company executives keep adding ingredients to processed food to make them addictive knowing it’ll hurt health outcomes and lead to more death.

Company executives continue to sell medicine that they sell for $20 or $10 in Europe or India, but charge americans $5000 or higher for the same medicine in the same package.

They shut down any research paper that outs them, by suppressing the findings, like Facebook or Junk food companies do whenever a research is conducted on their products.

We should celebrate our pioneers and innovators, but we shouldn’t ignore it blindly when MBA execs and Beancounters actively sabotage and hurt their own customers and the masses. Businesses are awesome, but it shouldnt be used to give a no questions asked green flag to anyone who runs businesses.

There are people actively lobbying for policies that lead to more american deaths, bankruptcies, families breaking into shambles, and the government watching from the sidelines and even sometimes helping to make it all happen.

Yes, there are people who do want to subdue the masses and keep them dumb, just as long as it helps them buy 1 more yacht or few more 0s in their bank balance.

I say it as a free market capitalist who is ardently anti-communist.

stetrain
0 replies
2h32m

This is conspiracy level thinking. Nobody wealthy is sitting around scheming how to keep the proles dumb and subdued.

Of course not. They're scheming about how to monetize education, knowledge, and research.

1) Stop wasting my tax dollars on stuff I don't use or care about. Or 2) I bet there is an untapped commercial market that can be built, and people will love my solution more than public libraries.

(2) Gets a lot easier if you first advocate for (1) to make the public libraries worse.

vik0
6 replies
10h12m

If you're rich, powerful and an unethical asshole those are two things you definitely do not want.

This smells like a half-baked conspiracy theory. It's not like the overwhelming majority of people want to get smarter in their free time. I'm not sure how it is in the rest of the world, but in American and all (individual) European cultures, most people don't pursue self-education. I would not be surprised if this applies to most other cultures as well

You might say that's how a lot of people on this website got their knowledge, but this website is statistically insignificant compared to the world population. Plus, it's not like every single member here pursues self-education. I'm willing to wager most people come on here just to be entertained

dfxm12
2 replies
4h14m

Conservatives in the US are constantly trying to ban books [0] and defund education [1].

It's not surprising that this push comes amid the understanding that the less educated one is, the more likely they are to vote R [2]. Conservative governments placing restrictions on education to cling to power has historical precedent. Iran comes to mind as a recent example. It's not a "half-baked conspiracy theory", it's a political strategy. Hell, the Texas GOP's 2012 platform was specifically against teaching critical thinking skills [3] because these skills could undermine authority.

0 - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/09/republ...

1 - https://www.americanprogress.org/article/house-republican-bu...

2 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/609776/democrats-lose-ground-bl...

3 - https://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Pl...

hollywood_court
0 replies
3h47m

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. You speak the truth.

We're experiencing this very same thing now in Alabama. Or one could simply look at Florida. Things aren't getting better here. The current GOP leadership is trying their best to be as regressive as possible.

I feel like I am doing my son an incredible disservice by raising him in Alabama, but my wife refuses to leave while her mother is still living here.

docmars
0 replies
2h57m

While there are a few fringe pockets where GOP influence isn't helping anyone, by and large, the "conspiracy theorists" and MAGA folks are attacking major news outlets, scientific journals, etc. strictly because they have been corrupted and influenced by highly partisan partnerships from the left, to bend narratives or outright lie about controversial issues and current events in their favor.

When citizen journalists on X (and other places) are putting corporate media to shame because they're willing to faithfully report what the corporates aren't, that's a clear sign there's something amiss. Breaking free of this one-sided media conglomerate is essential for critical thinking, because journalists have no place in thinking for people, which is unfortunately true on all sides, in practice.

Worse, corporate media sources use their powerful positions not just as a beacon of authority, but as a way to enforce false narratives through their close partnerships with their preferred political partners, who are working to manipulate those narratives in their favor for political gain, like winning elections at nearly any cost. Additionally, shaming and declaring citizen & independent journalists as "misinformants" for questioning mainstream narratives that have been identified as patently false/twisted, either by lying or by omission, evidenced by whistleblowers calling out these issues in interviews with independent sources, knowing their stories won't be edited for political purposes.

Similarly on X, now that it isn't captured by a political side that openly believes censorship is acceptable to elevate their own preferred narratives, information can flow freely and users on X can think for themselves (scary, I know... imagine if YOU could think freely and post your own convictions! How will humanity survive?). Since the previous "community guidelines" enforcers at Twitter have been fired, faithful counter-reporting is no longer being policed (the "now" true Hunter Biden report comes to mind conveniently after the 2020 election was over). Now Conservatives can have an equal and prominent voice there, given that Twitter/X has always been a premier source of real-time news and reporting.

If something cannot be questioned, speculating on the motives around it is essential. The 20th century saw too many tyrants dictating the flow of information for us to conveniently forget its devastating impacts on their respective societies. Not a single politician, media outlet, scientist, or "expert" is above being questioned, for any reason whatsoever. It is the only path to healthy, inclusive dialogue.

atoav
1 replies
9h41m

I didn't say rich, powerful and unethical people actively need to work against public libraries. They just don't need to support them, which is enough, given the fact that they often land in or near places of political power.

Just don't increase the funding while inflation increases and you're basically cutting funding. And then when things eventually start to look like shit tear them down. And these are not even things a rich, powerful and unethical person needs to do willingly or on purpose. It is just a thing that happens, because it isn't high on the priority list. And it isn't high on the priority list because it doesn't make them direct money.

Now if you're a politician that profits from your constituents being not too critical why should you actively support a thing that has the potential to make them more critical? Not that you actively have to be against it, it just isn't that high on your list of priorities..

This is how incentives work. And while there are people who will support measures which won't directly profit them short term, it seems to me they are an endangered species, at least in the US.

ghaff
0 replies
4h21m

Public libraries are largely funded/supported locally. In my town, that mostly means out of a vote at town meeting, volunteer organizations, and an annual book sale. There is occasionally local political drama but it's mostly around people who earn some nominal salary that wouldn't persuade a lot of people on this site to get out of bed in the morning.

CalRobert
0 replies
3h20m

It doesn't need to be most people though. It just needs to be the smart ones.

throw__away7391
2 replies
8h5m

Ah yes, just last week me and my fellow billionaires at our secret biannual conference in Geneva were discussing how we can prevent people from reading books at the library. See, people reading is a threat to our power, one which we take very seriously. It is not going to be easy, especially seeing how many of us have donated millions of dollars to libraries and a few even have wings of libraries named after us, but the threat is too severe now, drastic measures must be taken.

Now seeing how people are on to our plot, the urgency is clear. I am proposing that over the next few decades we work secretly behind the scenes to gradually reduce funding for various local libraries which have seen visitors decline since the rise of the Internet.

jacobyoder
1 replies
7h47m

few even have wings of libraries named after us

Public libraries? With easy access?

throw__away7391
0 replies
7h35m

I don’t know if you have ever been to a public library, but basically all of them are prominently adorned with the names of their largest donors.

yardie
1 replies
3h57m

Carnegie: “I’d like to avoid being remembered for having a bunch of labor strikers shot and killed. How can I launder my reputation?”

PR: “sir, with enough money you can make the public believe whatever you want.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewashing_(censorship)

cafard
0 replies
2h20m

Quite.

Do you refuse, on principle, to visit the Frick when in New York City? For that matter do you avoid the Rockefeller Center?

j45
13 replies
12h45m

Limiting or undermining literacy remains important to those who benefit from it.

nox101
9 replies
11h43m

what logic leads to this conclusion? I tend to lean to the rising tide lifts all boats. who benefits from illiteracy?

boringg
2 replies
4h7m

The response to your comment thread here is some pretty high flying conspiracies. The thought that those in power would try and make the country illiterate is straight up ridiculous. That would completely undermine the competitiveness of the country AND the time line to get any benefit for the "elites or whomever is behind it" would be significantly long.

Now if you are talking about a country like India - sure I could see Modi doing that. In that case it would be more about restricting growth and investment into education then dismantling an economy built on knowledge.

j45
0 replies
12m

I don't think I said anything about making people illiterate.

Undermining literacy means so they are not as literate as they could be to improve their lives.

For example, there are more than a few studies on literacy and education levels of the political spectrum for better and worse.

India is a different world. The crime against humanity that is the caste system all but forbade 1-3% of the population to be permitted to learn how to read. 95-98% of Indians were not permitted to learn how to read, and had to rely on the interpretations of the less populous castes.

Ironically it is a minority that largely broke this logjam and helped push literacy for the many forward.

I'll gladly take the downvotes for speaking the truth about caste being a divider between people and society.

TheOtherHobbes
0 replies
1h27m

No one is suggesting billionaires are rational.

yunohn
1 replies
11h12m

Elites are always worried about the labor crisis - “nobody wants to work”. Usually this is about blue collar work, and their desire to underpay and overwork service/laborers.

Globally, this class of people definitely wants to reduce literacy to keep a stream of manual labor inflowing.

bumby
0 replies
5h49m

This is a strong claim that needs some data to back it up.

animex
0 replies
10h38m

People who want to control the illiterate and subjugate their voting power to their own ends.

Root_Denied
0 replies
11h30m

who benefits from illiteracy?

Those already on top.

They can afford to educate their own line and hoard resources across generations doing so. They can fail as many times as it takes before they finally succeed because of this. They throw the bodies of the world at their problems until they are solved, which necessitates an uneducated populace that doesn't realize they're chattel and canon fodder to this purpose. A populace that fear collective power, that fears community beyond immediate family, that shies away from actions that would better the world in favor of actions that are less risky personally.

Karellen
0 replies
9h7m

The number of vastly unequal societies throughout history who have banned the lower classes from learning how to read, or from any kind of education at all - beyond whatever narrow training will make them better perform their specific duties for those on top.

...and not just historically. Some societies where significant minority groups are banned from getting an education, in order to further perpetuate their marginalisation, still exist today.

cafard
1 replies
7h18m

The advocates of "whole-language" learning as against "phonics" seem to do a fair job of limiting or undermining literacy. Yet how it benefits them I don't see. And what is the reference of "it" in the last sentence? Literacy, or limited or undermined literacy?

j45
0 replies
4h42m

I should have said and, instead of for.

Undermining is a form of limiting, and limiting is a form of undermining.

creole_wither
0 replies
2h8m

A literate population that reads what you want them to read is even better.

grepLeigh
3 replies
11h29m

OverDrive (and Libby) were acquired by KKR, the behemoth PE firm responsible for bankrupting Toys R Us. KKR also acquired one of the Big Five publishing houses last year. I'm worried about public library funds being squeezed by an extractive PE playbook.

I wonder what kind of negotiating power a regional library has in that situation. Do state library agencies have more leverage than regional libraries? Do large states like California have more leverage in negotiating digital licenses than smaller states? Would a national library system have even more leverage? I'll ask a librarian tomorrow and report back.

runamok
0 replies
2h4m

Oh no, worst news I have heard in a while. My wife and I LOVE Libby.

r0ks0n
0 replies
6h23m

kkr is kanker in dutch

lstamour
0 replies
10h12m

OverDrive is a strong player but they’re still a commodity. Publishers and libraries can use other lending platforms if and when they emerge as stronger competitors. This article serves as a good overview: https://openeducationalberta.ca/ciicm/chapter/public-library...

The problem is the publishers - they don’t always sign on to provide books to every new platform and don’t always release to every platform. But other platforms do exist: https://bookriot.com/comparing-public-library-ebook-platform...

al_borland
13 replies
4h29m

I'm continually shocked by the number of people who forget that libraries exist, and what they are.

linuxftw
11 replies
4h25m

It's almost like it's a totally unnecessary public expenditure at this point, and those funds could be used for, IDK, feeding the homeless?

wesselbindt
4 replies
3h7m

You mentioning helping the homeless in this convo has the same kind of vibe to me as conservatives only mentioning mental health when talking about gun control. They only ever mention mental health as a distraction from issues they do actually care about (like gun control), and have no interest in actually solving mental health issues. It's a typical way of bad faith arguing. That's just vibes though; there's a good chance you'd actually in earnest like to divert library funds toward helping the homeless. It's an issue that's very close to my heart too, so I get the sentiment.

Still, I disagree. Just because one of two problems is worse (e.g. literacy and homelessness, or murder and burglary) doesn't mean we can just ignore one problem in favor of another. Just because murder is worse than burglary doesn't mean we should divert all police attention and money currently being spent on burglary to solving murders. Just because women's rights in the US by far surpass those in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean we should take the efforts we put into women's rights issues in the US and divert them to solving women's right's issues in SA. Just because homelessness is in some sense worse than illiteracy and low education doesn't mean we should divert funds from libraries to solving homelessness.

Having written all this out, it feels far too obvious for you to not know this. Maybe it's not just vibes.

linuxftw
3 replies
2h6m

I volunteer at my local food bank to help feed to homeless. I understand just how dire the need is. Libraries are a luxury we cannot afford right now, and frankly nobody uses them. Any 'feel good' purpose like 'literacy' is already met by public schools. There's already federal subsidies for internet and telephone for the needy, and the people that live too far away to get internet definitely don't have the money or means to drive into town to use the library.

I would be willing to compromise on small buildings that function as internet cafes that are free to use for the public, we can get rid of all the excess staff and books, though.

shkkmo
1 replies
51m

I volunteer at my local food bank to help feed to homeless. I understand just how dire the need is.

If you spent much deal actually dealing with the homeless themselves, you'd know how crucial a resource a library is for homeless people. For something you see as "dire", you don't seem to have even done anything as simple as google "libraries help homeless."

Libraries are a luxury we cannot afford right now,

Completely false. Libraries are one of the areas of public spending where the return per dollar spent is highest. Libraries are social institutions we cannot afford not to fund.

and frankly nobody uses them

Again, you seem to have failed to do basic research as libraries get a ton of use and genetally suffer from a lack of funding relative to their usage rates.

There's already federal subsidies for internet and telephone for the needy, and the people that live too far away to get internet definitely don't have the money or means to drive into town to use the library.

Most poor people are urban and in dense enough areas to that easily access libraries could be (and often are) available.

I would be willing to compromise on small buildings that function as internet cafes that are free to use for the public, we can get rid of all the excess staff and books, though.

Oh, how generous of you. Why don't you go meet some librarians and learn about what they actually do before you write off their usefulness.

linuxftw
0 replies
10m

What do you think you've done to sway my opinion on the matter? There's a finite amount of money, and more pressing needs than letting people checkout paper books.

Let's look at it like this: Current budget: $100; $90 going to library, $10 going to feeding the needy. We can assume that even the entire library's budget won't overcome the shortfall in feeding the needy.

You're choosing to let more people be unfed in order that a handful of people can read Harry Potter or whatever is popular these days. Bad trade off.

LVB
0 replies
1h17m

and frankly nobody uses them

Random stat from my Oregon county (pop. 600k) library collective of 16 local libraries: 2023 saw 10.8M items checked out, up 4% from 2022

thefaux
1 replies
4h13m

I'm pretty sure that wasteful library budgets is not a significant factor causing hunger or homelessness.

veunes
0 replies
21m

You're absolutely right. Library budgets are typically a small fraction of government spending I think

veunes
0 replies
22m

libraries remain valuable. They provide access to a wide range of resources to people who are not able to get it

machomaster
0 replies
4h14m

If you think that libraries are totally unnecessary public expenditure, then it really tells more about you than about the libraries.

The same type of revelation of the person, who says that foodstamps are totally unnecessary expenditure.

helpfulmandrill
0 replies
3h10m

If they get rid of the libraries the savings will be used for tax cuts. Guarantee it.

al_borland
0 replies
3h51m

Libraries can be a useful place for homeless, or low income, people to get access to a computer to write up a resume, apply for jobs, etc.

The people who forget about libraries are likely well off. Shutting down libraries to feed the homeless doesn’t make sense, as libraries are a tool that can allow them to eventually feed themselves, if well used.

veunes
0 replies
24m

Me too, and it's today's digital age, where information is readily available online

rfarley04
11 replies
11h21m

This! I'm from Oregon but live in Thailand, where there are ZERO libraries. My absolute favorite thing about going home is just maxxing out my library card and seeing how much I can get through before heading home (I can do ebooks and audiobooks while abroad with Libby but I'm one of those obnoxious people that always prefers physical)

closetkantian
10 replies
10h44m

This is an exaggeration. I also live in Thailand, and I just got a library card at the very stately Neilson Hayes library last week. A bit pricey (3000 THB/year) but amazing ambience since the library was built in 1860.

rfarley04
7 replies
7h47m

Yea $100 bucks a year for a small historical library with a very limited selection of English books (that's 45 minutes away from me) doesn't really compare to a free library that's in every city in the US (or many libraries in bigger cities)

closetkantian
2 replies
5h59m

I mean there are actually quite a few public libraries here, but of course the selection is primarily in Thai. I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise.

rfarley04
1 replies
4h50m

Which ones? Genuinely curious because I'm only aware TK Park (paid membership sponsored by... True? Or someone like that)

closetkantian
0 replies
3h43m

Bangkok City Library, Bangkok Public Library

cacois
2 replies
6h50m

To the above posters credit, it sounds like their claim of exaggeration was spot on (he didn't say it was a lie). You didn't say their libraries don't compare to US ones, you said they don't exist.

rfarley04
1 replies
4h51m

I did even capitalize ZERO so that's on me. But also no one has pointed out any public libraries in this thread to my knowledge. Just private ones

machomaster
0 replies
4h12m

You are still in the wrong. "Zero libraries" is different from "zero public libraries".

muyuu
0 replies
2h35m

it's odd to me that you'd expect a large stock of English books in any regular Thai library

even in Japan, with perhaps the very strongest reading culture in the world, you're going to find a relatively limited selection of books in library outside of their own language

you'll likely have less success finding a varied stock of Thai books in Oregon, to the surprise of nobody

wrp
1 replies
10h15m

I haven't been to Thailand, but I assume there are also libraries at the universities. The parent appears to be referring to a tradition of public libraries, so these are not really counterexamples.

I've used private English libraries in various countries of the Middle East and East Asia. For the expat community, they were really a treasure before the internet.

ghaff
0 replies
3h21m

University libraries are sort of a mixed bag. They're not really advertised but they're fairly open to public browsing in some cases, however pretty locked-down in others.

initplus
11 replies
13h38m

It's not disruption to make me wait 5 weeks to read a digital file through my local library's Libby service. It's an outdated business model using artificial scarcity that isn't effective at getting books onto readers devices. Spotify doesn't make me take out a hold on the artist I want to listen to. Netflix doesn't make me queue to watch the latest release.

rockemsockem
5 replies
11h58m

I don't think it's fair to compare Netflix and Spotify to libraries; you pay for the first two.

I agree that it's artificial scarcity and it's hard to feel bad for the publishing companies

thayne
1 replies
11h23m

I do pay for my library card, because my city doesn't have a library (unless you count bookmobile), and the nearby cities that do have libraries charge you to get a library card if you aren't a resident. And it is approx. $9.99/mo.

jacobyoder
0 replies
7h43m

Wow... mine is $25/year. I live in a rural county, but work across the border in a less rural county, with a much bigger library system. For $25/year I get access to probably 10x as much stuff through them. I expect it might go to $30 this year.

seanp2k2
0 replies
11h48m

We pay for libraries through taxes, it’s just that they’re considered a public good so important that everyone has to contribute to pay for them.

dredmorbius
0 replies
11h12m

Public libraries are paid for through public taxation.

Which suggests a possible solution the the greater problem.

yard2010
0 replies
8h19m

Every time I want to try a book I open up Libby and then get angry about this stupidity.

So I just go to the better library - genesis, which is free and unlimited.

tasuki
0 replies
9h21m

It's not disruption to make me wait 5 weeks to read a digital file

That seems very much like a disruption to me. In the "interruption to the regular flow or sequence of something" meaning of the word.

grepLeigh
0 replies
11h4m

Netflix has licensing restrictions too, but the limitation is time/exclusivity (rather than number of copies). You can only watch whatever Netflix owns distribution rights to. Although Netflix does charge more per device, so that's a bit like charging per "copy" of their service on top of the limited distribution.

I'm wondering if you'd really prefer a library system where you could get some titles instantly, but the majority of content is unavailable because some other digital service provider owns distribution in your region for the next 12-16 months. I'd hate that, personally.

awiesenhofer
0 replies
6h48m

outdated business model

It's NOT a business!

_aavaa_
0 replies
1h24m

The reason Spotify and Netflix don't make you wait is because they give the copyright owners money for views. A library does not, nor do I think they should.

The current business model of selling libraries ebooks that can only be viewed a max number of times before needing to be repurchased, or only for a limited amount of time, is a money grab pure and simple.

randcraw
6 replies
3h42m

In contrast, public libraries around the Philly area are essentially dead. Town libraries are so underfunded that their mortar presences are open only until 7 PM M-Th, close at 5 F & Sa, and are closed Sundays. They have greatly reduced their paper book holdings and now rely almost entirely on ebooks, which number fewer than 2000, and interlibrary loans of any kind do not exist.

In contrast, public libraries in Michigan are thriving (another place I know well). I have no idea why the difference is so stark.

In my over 60 years, I've never lived anywhere so illiterate as Philly.

vl
2 replies
3h34m

Libraries are funded from local taxes, this is why there is a difference.

bumby
1 replies
2h14m

Are you implying the OP was over-sampling on wealthier Michigan neighborhoods? Because I read their quote as applying to Michigan as a whole, and there are certainly parts of Michigan that are poor enough to have strained local taxes.

vl
0 replies
50m

Not at all. I literally mean that libraries are funded by communities (i.e. private groups, towns, counties, states), and some communities chose to fund them lavishly and some not to fund them at all.

treflop
0 replies
2h30m

Haven't lived in Philly but I've been.

It's one of those somewhat rare livable working class cities, no? With a pretty big DIY scene.

maxsilver
0 replies
2h53m

public libraries in Michigan are thriving (another place I know well). I have no idea why the difference is so stark.

I can't speak for Philly, but Michiganders have a long long-standing community tradition of fighting to defend our public libraries from an onslaught of various attacks. And while the quality of the library system can vary (based on location and local funding authority), Michiganders generally have majority support for public libraries as an institution, and pass successful votes for them regularly.

(historic Library voting records) https://www.michigan.gov/libraryofmichigan/-/media/Project/W... (be careful reading this, not every red/failing vote is bad -- for example, May 2023's red line is a success for that public library, that something bad did not pass)

chrisBob
0 replies
2h59m

Where in Michigan? I regularly visit libraries in Ann Arbor, and Whitmore Lake. Both have libraries that are a wonderful resource for the community, but the difference in funding is obvious.

gavin_gee
1 replies
1h43m

The licensing costs for Ebooks are unsustainable for library's. The publishers don't want any sharing and so the cost per ebook vs physical is totally out of sync with Ebooks considerably higher. One could argue that publishers are the ones who are strangling the viability of libraries to exist.

appplication
0 replies
1h38m

This feels like something that could/should be legislated. Libraries should not be subject to the same restrictions on content sharing that consumers are.

Or maybe one better: eliminate restrictions on content sharing.

ar_lan
1 replies
14h15m

If anything did, it's Libby, except that directly just worked alongside libraries instead of disrupting them.

lannisterstark
0 replies
13h38m

I sincerely hope one day they get off their asses and implement casting that their predecessor, overdrive, had.

speaking of, btw, your library likely has 'partner' libraries where you can borrow stuff too using overdrive/libby. You can often see a list on top right of the overdrive page of your respective library.

yard2010
0 replies
8h26m

Sure but why would I pay for something I can get for free from the library - either a physical one or genesis?

winternett
0 replies
1h30m

In my city certain people are often using them and leaving... uh... errant trace elements of themselves on said resources, especially the public-use computers... :/

I'm not really a germaphobe, but in the age of the pandemic, I think public resources like libraries are under serious threat, just like busses and public transit. It would be nice if there was some sort of reassurance that cleaning and disinfecting was taking place between each use.

vl
0 replies
3h16m

But you realize that you paid for all of this with your local taxes? It’s not like there is a magical place where laser cutters chose to spawn for free.

sleepycatgirl
0 replies
10h43m

Yeah... Libraries are very much lovely places. Truly bliss how they can exist...

And about books themselves, I hate subscriptions, and all the DRM garbage, and if I can't own the epub without DRM, then I won't buy it. To be honest, the silver lining is that DeDRM exists, so I can actually obtain Japanese novels for my cute e-ink devices, but.. bleh.

jhwhite
0 replies
3h44m

I was in the local library yesterday for the first time in a while and they had a 3d printer AND THEY WERE HATCHING BABY CHICKS! How awesome is that!

eeskildsen
0 replies
8h27m

Since going full-time on my startup, I often work remotely at my local library. Over my time there, my eyes have been opened to what an absolute treasure public libraries are.

Besides the physical books everyone knows about, which are a treasure by themselves, there are many other valuable resources, as you mentioned, including:

- The Adobe suite, even including Character Animator

- Udemy

- Digital access to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others

- Free notary services

- Print magazines and newspapers

- Puzzles

- Music and films

- eBooks and audiobooks

...not to mention community activities like classes, groups, and concerts.

Just being physically present in the library has benefited me. When I take breaks, I sometimes pick up a book at random. It may be about sales, health, politics, history. I sometimes come away with new ideas for my business, sometimes am just inspired or informed or amused in general.

I encourage anyone reading to stop by a library if you haven't been in a while. See what they offer. You might be surprised. And please, do what you can to support them in whatever way you can, even if that's just to use them, demonstrating the need for them by your patronage. We need these institutions, and they won't be around forever without our support.

coding123
0 replies
11h54m

It would be the most expensive megabyte.

paxys
78 replies
20h21m

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech.

You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper.

You print books? Well we have e-books now.

You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it.

You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly.

You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarter give 10x more.

What's sad though is that publishers have historically had one power that would have been unassailable – editorial judgement. They could have sustained their brands on quality. Imagine a world where you wanted something good to read, and among all the garbage out there saw a title and went "this one is by Simon & Schuster, it has to be good". Instead they went all in on pulp bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good authors, and here we are.

devjab
10 replies
12h31m

I can. Book publishers are terrible and they always have been. At least that is the case here in Denmark.

They game our library system, so that books they know won’t sell well but will be lent a lot at the libraries, like a lot of children books are priced ridiculously. These books are never actually put in stores, because why bother? But our libraries, have, to buy them and then pay fees to the publishing houses based on the individual book prices. I guess part of the blame goes to our politicians though.

The worst part is how they pay artists. Authors are paid poorly as touched upon in this article. But illustrators are paid criminally low rates. A children book with 50 pages of breathtaking art can earn you as little as $500 for months for work. Publishers pay your royalties by the size of your printed name on the front of the book. If your name isn’t there you get 0 royalties. If your name is smaller than the other names you get significantly less royalties. If your name is smaller, and, italic, you get almost no royalties and so on.

In general the model has never really worked for anyone except a few authors. There are the famous ones who sell a lot of books and then there are the ones who write a billion children’s books who actually don’t get the majority of their money from publishers but from the government compensation programs. But for the most part publishers have always run a business model akin to music streaming services where only a handful of Danish authors can actually make a living just by selling books. Mean while our publishing houses have been able to employ thousands and keep investors happy.

What a lot of artists and authors have done instead is to form smaller independent publishers. Which means you get 0 advertising and 0 product placement and so on, but ironically often will make you far more money than using the big publishers. These smaller indie publishers, and other creative ways of publishing like the article mentions, aren’t doing poorly. The big publishers are suffering. Thanks to the digital age. But I won’t miss them when they are gone.

bazoom42
5 replies
9h40m

books they know won’t sell well but will be lent a lot at the libraries

This sounds weird. Wouldn’t the books which are lent more also sell more? Childrens books are a big market for book stores and of course they want to sell the most popular books. Are you referring to some particular book which cannot be purchased?

Also libriaries does not have to buy any book.

devjab
4 replies
7h26m

It may sound weird, but there is not a link between lending from libraries and book sales. Some children’s books sell well, but if you go to the sections of them in book stores you’ll rarely find more than a handful of Danish authors represented. The ones which the bookstores know will sell well.

Our Libraries have to make all Danish published material available. Some of this is indeed not bought, but because children’s books are often on the high end of popularity at libraries they generally by every children’s book which gets published buy one of our major publishers. Also, publishers often lobby the municipality politicians who set the overall guidelines for their local libraries to make sure their books are represented.

brabel
1 replies
7h1m

So, can I publish a book in Denmark, say it costs 1,000 dollars, and your libraries will be forced to buy it just because they have to make "all Danish published material available."?? There must be some sort of guidelines (though seeing how Swedish law works I wouldn't be surprised you guys just "trust" people to price things correctly).

bazoom42
0 replies
6h51m

All publishers are required to supply one copy of any published book to the royal library (for free).

Individual libraries are not required to buy any particular book. They have a fixed budget for buying material and will decid based on quality and expected demand.

bazoom42
0 replies
6h45m

Out of curiosity, can you provide some examples of these books which are artificially expensive, popular in libraries, but not for sale commercially?

Also, publishers often lobby the municipality politicians who set the overall guidelines for their local libraries to make sure their books are represented.

Politicians are supposed to set the overall guidelines but not to decide what individial books libraries purchase. Do you have examples where politicians pressure or force libraries to buy specific books?

yunohn
3 replies
11h9m

I guess part of the blame goes to our politicians though.

There is no universe in which public funds are leeched without political complicity and corruption. Most likely the publishers benefitted are either related to or provided kickbacks to the influential parties.

bazoom42
2 replies
10h2m

Sorry, is publishing a book which gets a lot of readers through the public libraries now “leeching” and “corruption”?

serial_dev
1 replies
9h38m

What a strawman!

Depending on how they got the deal with the library, and how much they get compensated for that, yes it is.

bazoom42
0 replies
9h37m

What do you mean “the deal with the library”? What deal are you referring to? Libraries does not make individual deals with publishers or authors. They buy the books at market price and pay authors some additional royalties determined by objective criteria according to an agreement with the organization for authors and illustrators. It is all public information.

If you want to make an accusation of corruption you need to be more specific.

Anon4Now
8 replies
19h54m

Businesses that remain stagnant don't get shafted so much as outmaneuvered. Instead of investing and pivoting, they cling to the old business model. Short term, their decisions make financial sense, but long term, it's a death sentence.

Meanwhile, Amazon is looked at as the behemoth in the industry, yet it probably isn't thought of as an online book store / publisher by most people. I think of so many things before I get to, "Oh yeah, they also sell books."

The one piece of information that I wish the article had mentioned is the age demographics of avid book readers. My gut tells me the market has dropped significantly in the last ~25 years, but I'd like to see the data.

treflop
3 replies
16h34m

I don't think a company that publishes books is going to be able to pivot to building an online book selling platform that easily. They just don't have anyone with the knowledge nor the capital to hire the people who then know who else to hire.

Just like I don't see someone working in construction picking up programming or some software engineer picking up construction. It happens, but generally both are just not built the same.

mike_hearn
1 replies
10h45m

Well, Amazon started out with almost no capital, so apparently they could have built an online book platform pretty easily. And the capital requirements of selling books online only fell over time as the tech got more widespread.

Businesses like that are everywhere, but the root cause is always the same: they're run by people who do not like or have any interest in technology. And they hire people just like themselves.

youngtaff
0 replies
10h25m

In the early days Amazon relied on huge amounts of trade credit from the publishers / distributors

Seem to remember that if the publishers hadn’t been lax about Amazon’s delinquent debt the publishers could have forced Amazon into bankruptcy

(Worked for a major US technical / educational publishing house in the late 90s / early 00s)

Ray20
0 replies
14h38m

They just don't have anyone with the knowledge nor the capital to hire the people who then know who else to hire. Doesn't seem to be true. They pay celebrities (for their boring bs books that no one read) enough to build a dozen online platforms
huijzer
2 replies
10h45m

The one piece of information that I wish the article had mentioned is the age demographics of avid book readers. My gut tells me the market has dropped significantly in the last ~25 years, but I'd like to see the data.

I read a lot of non-fiction books and don't think much has changed over time. For non-fiction you always had groups of people, typically academics and successful business people and politicians, who read tons and tons of books. Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, for example, both read many books when they were young in around 1900 to 1930. How many people who worked in factories at the time would have read books? Not many I think. Today it's more or less the same. You have a few people like David Senra or Stephen Kotkin, who read 100-200 books per year, and you have the average person who reads maybe one. Just like book sales, it's a power law.

leoedin
1 replies
10h33m

I suspect I’d read a lot more non-fiction books if I couldn’t access the short form equivalent on my phone readily. But instead I read articles shared on HN or Reddit, with a sprinkling of non fiction books mixed in. Compared to my dad, who devoured non fiction books in the 80s and 90s, my lifetime spend is going to be far lower.

ghaff
0 replies
4h4m

A lot of non-fiction books--especially in the business realm--have always been a long-form (or short-form) article padded out to book length for publishing economics reasons. And, if you look at the programming realm specifically, a lot of reference books are essentially available online.

bigthymer
0 replies
17h1m

The best survey data I've found for this information is linked here [1]. It breaks data down by age range for those who read at least one book in the prior year. It defines avid readers as having read 50 books/year but doesn't do an age breakdown for this subset.

1 - National Endowment for the Arts - "U.S. Patterns of Arts Participation: A Full Report from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts" - <https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/US_Patterns_of_Arts...>, page 44

makeitdouble
7 replies
19h15m

When you say "publishing industry" you're really saying "paper book industry", right ?

Nothing stops a publisher from being an ebook publisher, and that's a tried and true successful model adopted all around the world.

You'd have made the same argument for vinyl record publishers saying they're cornered into a niche, but no, as you point put artists will still want editorial power and support, so digital music is thrieving.

kasey_junk
6 replies
18h50m

Nothing stops a publisher from being an ebook publisher

Except that the biggest platform for ebooks (by a big stretch, they own ~70% of the market) is a company that you have a direct adversarial relationship with in most other parts of your business.

makeitdouble
3 replies
18h12m

Business is business. If a publisher is refraining from going into ebooks altogether because of Amazon, when they get the option to direct sell and also access the other ebook platforms as well, I feel they're not long for this world either way.

kasey_junk
2 replies
16h3m

Im not suggesting they are refraining from going into ebooks due to Amazon I’m suggesting it’s not a tried and true business model the world over.

It’s mostly not a going business model outside of the profits Amazon brings in from it.

makeitdouble
1 replies
14h39m

It's difficult to prove a negative. Ebooks are a growing market in the US, the EU and SEA (though TBH I have no idea about China amd India) It's been more than a decade that it's mainstream and takes about 10~20% of book sales depending on the country.

Amwzon's profits are still split with the publishers and publishers have their own venues + competitors (in particular outside of the US) so I'm not sure why Amazon's presence is a blow against the industry as a whole.

What more would be needed to see it as a validated business area?

kasey_junk
0 replies
6h8m

Ebook sales have trended down in the US since 2013[0]. They got a pandemic bump in 2020 which didn’t put them over the peak years in 2013/14 and like many things had a correction downwards afterwards[1].

Amazon maintains 70% of the US ebook marketplace and keeps a much bigger portion of the money from books published through their publishing arm than they do book published through the traditional publishers. They also have less high standards for publishing. This makes it harder to find traditional published books on the biggest platform for selling them.

[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/426799/e-book-unit-sales...

[1]https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/us-ebooks-sales-dec...

tallanvor
1 replies
8h21m

The adversarial relationship was basically the publishers' choice.

Remember that Amazon was willing to basically treat eBooks like normal books - negotiate the price they pay with the publishers and then sell the books at whatever price they want. The publishers are the ones who forced the agency model where retailers are forced to sell at a set price.

kasey_junk
0 replies
6h29m

That’s one way to describe it. The other way is to say Amazon used their outsized power in the book world, including disallowing pre sales and delaying shipments of regular books, to demand a price from the publishers.

It took a bunch of public pressure to change that arrangement.

I think you can easily say the publishers have bad ebook pricing strategy but Amazon certainly wasn’t using normal market practices for setting prices.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/13/amazon-hachett...

joe5150
5 replies
19h5m

I can't think of any publishers that are also in the business of printing and distribution. Those are entirely separate industries. There is almost no way for publishers to lose money because of tech that makes it cheaper and easier than ever to get books to consumers while retaining unprecedented control over pricing (fixed, never discounted or remaindered), resale (prohibited), and lending (also prohibited). Publishers sell eBooks for the same price as print books but pay almost nothing to produce them. That's a big bump in profits.

I don't see how any publisher is losing money on their back catalog due to scanning by Google, either. Google doesn't sell or even offer access to the full text of most books they scan, certainly not any that are under copyright and still being sold by publishers. Out of print books are by definition not earning money for publishers, so it wouldn't make any difference there.

TheCoelacanth
3 replies
18h24m

If you think that publishers spend almost nothing on producing ebooks, then you clearly understand nothing about the publishing industry.

joe5150
2 replies
18h8m

Notwithstanding what I understand about the publishing industry, I'm talking about the marginal cost of distributing a .mobi or whatever versus manufacturing a printed book, not the entire cost of publishing an eBook.

TheCoelacanth
1 replies
16h12m

That's only a dollar or two of difference per unit in costs to the publisher. The majority of their costs are exactly the same for ebooks and printed books.

joe5150
0 replies
14h58m

Sure, I never said they weren't.

kaedroho
0 replies
10h47m

I can't think of any publishers that are also in the business of printing and distribution

You're right that publishers don't handle printing, but they do need to handle distribution. Amazon won't help if you want to get books on shelves of retailers, and printers don't distribute. Smaller publishers will usually use the distribution network of a larger publisher. For example, HarperCollins and PRH both handle distribution in the UK for themselves and others.

zeroonetwothree
4 replies
17h52m

Aren’t print books still the vast majority of sales?

paxys
3 replies
15h28m

Ebooks are touching or have crossed 50% of sales in certain combinations of markets and genres. Overall they make up 30-50% of all book sales. So no, print books aren't still the vast majority.

nottorp
1 replies
11h38m

I remember reading on Charles Stross' blog that the paperback is kind of dead in the US. At least for his niche. I think his last book only went out in hard cover.

nottorp
0 replies
5h12m

I think his last book only went out in hard cover.

And ebook instead of paperback, of course.

kaedroho
0 replies
10h41m

Also worth mentioning that there are some genres that will never make sense as ebooks.

When was the last time someone bought you an ebook as a gift? This is is the main market for cookbooks, for example.

nitwit005
3 replies
15h51m

You print books? Well we have e-books now.

It's often the same publishers publishing the e-books. They did successfully make that transition.

Instead they went all in on pulp bestsellers and celebrity memoirs at the expense of actual good authors

If they're best sellers, as you note, that was clearly a good choice. They were selling what people actually wanted.

paxys
1 replies
15h31m

Yes people are buying John Grisham and JK Rowling and the latest celebrity memoir, but eventually (1) interest will run out and people will want the next new thing and (2) these big brands will realize that they don't need the publishers to market for them (and this is already happening, as the article says). What then?

nitwit005
0 replies
11h36m

Regardless of them struggling in the future, publishing books that sell is clearly superior to publishing one's that don't.

fragmede
0 replies
15h43m

Are they? Mark Dawson was caught buying 400 copies of his own book in 2020, but he's not the first or last author to have done that.

Turing_Machine
3 replies
20h18m

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech.

Publishers have been shafting authors for centuries. I'll shed no tears on their behalf.

Spivak
2 replies
19h52m

Prior to the digital age where it's possible for the author to self-publish the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of selling books and giving authors 15%.

So while I think it's been hard to make a living as an author I don't think it's necessarily the publisher's fault. Better to be the one's selling shovels than the ones mining for gold.

thfuran
1 replies
19h31m

the publisher was handling 99% of the actual business of selling books

It seems to me that you're rather underestimating the importance of having something to put in the book.

vidarh
0 replies
10h26m

Having written two novels, I will tell you it's far less work for a lot of writers to write the thing than getting decent sales. It varies - some do slave over their manuscripts for years, while others churn them out in a week, but selling books is hard work.

NegativeLatency
3 replies
19h57m

IMO there are still quality publishers, but they are small and tend to focus on specific topics. Two that I'm aware of, although I'm sure there are more out there:

- https://lostartpress.com

- https://tinhouse.com

huytersd
2 replies
16h7m

There are very few people go this is by Simon and Schuster etc. Most Americans don’t read and the ones that do read a bunch of junk.

throwaway2037
1 replies
11h33m

    > Most Americans
I would suggest an edit: Most humans

kubanczyk
0 replies
7h12m

Well, animals, plants, LLMs and the rest of known matter of the Universe also aren't very picky readers.

AtlasBarfed
2 replies
18h39m

Copyright law is ridiculous and abusive (thank you supreme court).

There is some role for domain knowledge, curation, and editing, but the article shows that's not what they make bucjs on: celebrity drivel, bibles, sat prep, and the copyright monopoly.

It's just a cartel, just like the music labels are.

tryptophan
1 replies
16h57m

Man can we just kill these industries?

Copyright law is so annoying and its supposed to promote quality...which we get none of. Free youtube tutorials are the best learning resource these days.

The GDP hit would be insignificant too, like <.1%.

avar
0 replies
10h17m

Are you under the impression that those YouTube tutorials aren't copyrighted?

vidarh
1 replies
9h39m

You print books? Well we have e-books now.

The vast majority of sales is still paper books.

You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly.

Some do. Most don't. Especially new authors. Publishers are playing a risky game of trying to figure out the tradeoff of how much to invest in developing an authors brand in the hope that future books will cost less to sell. Too much, and you have a cashflow problem today. Too little, and lose out on future returns.

You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarter give 10x more.

Most authors have no fans yet, and most never will - most authors write only a few books in their lifetime.

From what I see, most authors (myself included) would rather not deal with most of what publishers do. If anything, most authors would prefer it if publishers did more of the sales effort, but it's not economically viable in most cases.

munificent
0 replies
14m

> The vast majority of sales is still paper books.

Do you have numbers for this? I wouldn't be entirely surprised if paper book revenue dwarfed ebook sales, but given that the latter has no marginal cost, I expect that profit from ebooks is still a very large slice of the pie.

Anecdotally, with my two self-published books, ebook and PDFs make up a pretty large slice of the pie even though my books are known for prioritizing the print experience (careful layout, lots of illustrations, etc.).

> Some do. Most don't. Especially new authors. Publishers are playing a risky game of trying to figure out the tradeoff of how much to invest in developing an authors brand in the hope that future books will cost less to sell.

A new author with no established celebrity or audience is basically dead in the water. There was a world where a new author could:

1. Write a book that was good on its own merits.

2. Convince an agent to represent them based on that book's merits.

3. The agent convinces an editor at a well-known publisher to take it.

4. The publisher prints it and gets it on bookshelves in stores everywhere.

5. People looking for books stumble onto it and buy it.

That world existed when people had a lot of spare time and attention and relatively few things vying for it. That world no longer exists. You can consume media 24/7 and never come close to running out, all without spending a penny.

The days of just having to write a great book and get in front of two people to be successful are dead and gone.

> From what I see, most authors (myself included) would rather not deal with most of what publishers do. If anything, most authors would prefer it if publishers did more of the sales effort, but it's not economically viable in most cases.

There's a lot of stuff most people would rather not do, but unfortunately, sometimes the economic systems don't enable that.

ornornor
1 replies
3h13m

Imagine a world where you wanted something good to read, and among all the garbage out there saw a title and went "this one is by Simon & Schuster, it has to be good".

I feel this way about DK books although they don’t really do fiction but practical titles.

alok-g
0 replies
2h39m

+1 for DK.

cafard
0 replies
7h13m

That strikes me as cheating a bit, counting translations. Still, good for Fitzcarraldo.

DrBazza
1 replies
8h59m

In the UK many years ago, there was the Net Book Agreement, which was price fixing and Amazon, BooksOnline/StreetsOnline comprehensively broke that. Unfortunately, book shops didn't really learn, and we are where we are.

Back to the title. I still buy books. I've stopped buying them from Amazon, and just buy them from my LBS.

Though one thing still makes me irrationally angry - "SciFi + Fantasy" as "a genre" in bookshops. No. It. Isn't. It's two separate. Two loved-up vampires, isn't sci-fi. At least on Amazon I can filter that. Browse on Amazon, buy in the LBS. Which is the reverse of what I did a decade ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement

pm215
0 replies
4h27m

The Wikipedia article suggests that it was not Amazon and online bookselling that broke the Net Book Agreement, but big high street chain bookstores like Dillons. One of the references links to a newspaper article from December 1994 saying the agreement is "on its last legs", and Amazon was only founded in July 1994, so seems unlikely to have been very influential in its demise.

Aeolun
1 replies
13h9m

I don’t think it would have been possible for publishers to deal with the absolutely massive amount of books they’d have to vet to do what you’re saying.

That works if the absolute number of books written is very small, so everyone interested in books pulls from that pool.

The publishers could try to find a bunch of good books and get absolutely nothing.

yunohn
0 replies
11h1m

Curation is a multi-stage filtering pipeline. Such brands do not look at a firehose of content - they rely on existing networks and markers of quality before even considering content.

vram22
0 replies
19h40m

I saw the second part of your comment coming, while reading the first part - in my mind's eye :)

Uncanny valley, or maybe I just read the signals and interpreted them right.

tannhaeuser
0 replies
11h59m

Rather than feeling for the publishing industry, you should ask yourself what has gone wrong with the web as a medium for self-publishing.

pookha
0 replies
3h13m

Publishers are going nowhere. Who else is going to pay politicians millions for their ghost-written "memoirs"?

mcphage
0 replies
19h58m

You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper.

That just makes it Easter for publishers. The major problem with Amazon is monopsony, not easier distribution.

You print books? Well we have e-books now.

Which have to be purchased ultimately from the publishers, so again, they’re still there making money, they just don’t need to bother printing books anymore. You’ll note they’re not any cheaper.

You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly.

I think this is confusing cause and effect. Authors turned to social media because publishers weren’t doing a great job marketing, not because it makes publishers unnecessary.

marcus_holmes
0 replies
9h59m

Sorry, but no.

Authors have been complaining about publishers for ever. Publishers treated authors like crap when they controlled the market. No sympathy for them at all.

If they had any integrity they'd move to be the Spotify of books and serve their customers better. Instead (as the article says) they're spending their efforts trying to bail the sinking boat and resist any such move.

The world will be a better place without them.

greenie_beans
0 replies
13h7m

Imagine a world where you wanted something good to read, and among all the garbage out there saw a title and went "this one is by Simon & Schuster, it has to be good".

this still exists, but the presses are harder to find and mostly independent. FSG books are always good.

also, books these indie presses are always good: - tyrant (rip) - graywolf - new directions - NYRB

and some more, but idk your taste so not gonna recommend them.

elorant
0 replies
12h7m

Penguin is that publisher for me. Pretty much everything I've read from them is rock solid.

boringg
0 replies
4h4m

And you didn't even bring in LLMs into the equation having hoovered up most books ever written

beezle
0 replies
2h45m

Hard to feel sympathy for industry that left to its own devices requires a 50% discount to sell in store, near 40% to get to Amazon/BN etc, and for bricks and mortar, requires you to accept returns that end up as a loss.

araes
0 replies
18m

There are responses to every single one of these. Similar to Radioshack (3D printers, drones, Arduino, Raspberry PI), and Intel's (mobile, GPUs, foundries, AI) bankruptcies or "lost decades".

Distribute Books - They could have built a competitive distribution system by responding to what was an obvious aggressive threat. Amazon founded in 94', public by 97', buying book sellers by 98'. Four years, and Amazon was going International and buying book sellers.

e-books - Great. Sell e-books yourselves. Sell better e-books with Publisher extras.

Scanned catalog - Multiple responses. Legally inclined, lawsuits before it was all irreparably scraped (or afterward). Tech inclined, scrape your own stuff and make it available. Culturally or historically inclined, donate the texts to Gutenberg or a museum so the scraping doesn't get them much.

Authors have their own followings - Interact. "Hi, this is so-and-so from PRH, that's a neat idea for the author's work, and we'll discuss trying to work it into the next book launch." There's probably authors who follow authors, "Any of you wanna write a book?"

Cash advances - The cash advances are broke anyways. One of main points of the article. 70% of spending goes to 1% of authors. Try a slightly less power-law distribution. Maybe something a little less than x^60... PRH alone gave 55% of all advances in $1,000,000+ land. Have your own Kickstarters, or crowdfunding site. Arrange crowdfunding campaigns with marginal authors (for better author %). Work with fans directly so fans can put up the advance with pre-orders. Lots of alternatives to wringing their hands. (If Bates White Economic Consulting is correct, then 95% of money likely goes to 5% of authors).

What this article told me was the publishing industry has a bad case of "try to spend zero work, while making infinite $". 'if the platform is there for the advertising, then the spend might be lower.' 'Does the best selling author have the best marketing budget? No. Why? She's the queen of TikTok.' (she does her own marketing)

Ideally, the authors get their own loans from the bank, print their own materials, arrange their own distribution, put out their own marketing, and then we collect a vague value-add for putting our logo somewhere.

Hendrikto
0 replies
7h49m

You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly.

You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarter give 10x more.

Both of those seem very positive to me.

joshuamcginnis
21 replies
20h51m

I'm currently writing a book about independent thinking and I have zero expectations that it will sell even a single copy. However, the net gain I will get from having completed the goal of writing the book is invaluable to me personally.

bjelkeman-again
11 replies
20h38m

I had this idea for a hard science fiction story that I have been thinking about for years. Nobody else is going to write it, so I started. 20 000 words in my beta readers say it is good, so I think I will continue. And I don’t expect to sell it, but I want to know what happens and so do the beta readers. So on we go.

mysteria
3 replies
20h10m

You really have to write it for yourself if you want to keep going - unless you're lucky or have a large following already it's hard to get a lot of readers. I've written stories and serials and posted them on social media, my personal site, etc. (I release them as Creative Commons works) and few people read them. Self-published authors who want to make a living typically have to do a lot of promotion to get a chance.

Also there are times when I decide I want to read my own stuff for entertainment instead of a published novel. And the joy I get from that keeps me writing.

wolverine876
2 replies
18h37m

Many successful artists in any medium say they create things for themselves; it's more a compulsion than a business activity. Some are lucky that others like it; some are even luckier that others like it during the creator's lifetime; the luckiest even make money from it!

mysteria
1 replies
17h21m

If you want to make money you're often creating for your audience rather than for yourself too. For instance I know professional artists who don't enjoy their work that much since they end up having to please the client rather than make what they really want. Even for my own CC fiction my themes and language are affected by current trends and what I think my readers will like. Of course if you're lucky you can create whatever you like and your fans will eat it up, but how many people can do that?

As an aside though I feel that the science/engineering heavy HN crowd would bring some life to science fiction. We have the ability to write things that make technical sense and I'm sure many of you internally roast the handwaviness seen in some franchises. I don't know if I'm the only one that does this but I plan out the computer networks my characters use, draw cutaways and chip architecture diagrams for new devices I come up with, read scientific papers for research, and so forth. Sometimes that's even more fun than the actual writing!

jimbokun
0 replies
16h8m

Cixin Liu was a computer engineer working at a power plant before writing 3 Body Problem and its sequels. He very clearly embeds his love for science into his books.

mbbbackus
1 replies
20h29m

Currently in the same boat! When you say beta readers, do you mean other friends/writers or like people on twitter

bjelkeman-again
0 replies
2h37m

A mix of people who are known and good readers and some on Reddit /r/hfy

bhaney
1 replies
19h38m

Can I be a beta reader? Always looking for more good hard sci-fi.

bjelkeman-again
0 replies
2h36m

I should be easy to find from the profile here on HN.

vidarh
0 replies
9h28m

Keep at it. I've self-published my first two (and beaten the odds - somewhat - judging by this article, while still paying substantially below minimum wage for my time, but that's ok), and the experience is "interesting". The first time I had someone somewhat accusingly message me on twitter to ask when I'll get the next one out (I'm way overdue) was exciting.

greenie_beans
0 replies
20h21m

hell yeah, keep on writing!

Aeolun
0 replies
13h3m

I think the best motivation I’ve ever gotten for writing was finishing another story and being sad about it.

The best part about writing the story yourself is that it never ends unless you want it to (or you end, I suppose).

gizmo
2 replies
20h50m

I have read a couple of books on that subject and they all disappointed. I will gladly buy your book if it's original work.

joshuamcginnis
0 replies
19h39m

That's encouraging. It's definitely not fluff and original. The feedback would be valuable even if you don't end up liking it.

IlliOnato
0 replies
18h35m

Same here

deadbabe
2 replies
15h11m

I love the idea of owning books you can’t find anywhere else. One of the main reasons I don’t bother going to bookstores is because I know everything there is just gonna be on Amazon anyway, and with reviews.

But the idea of coming across a strange book few people have read, and finding unconventional wisdom and writing inside that no publisher would ever put out, sounds exciting!

I think more people should write books and publish them in small quantities and just give them away for others to discover some day. Let the books circulate through the world, growing old and more mysterious with time. It’d be better than keeping some static blog site that will disappear after a decade.

keiferski
0 replies
14h20m

Pretty much all of the physical books I own are like this: rare and impossible to find online, in digital format or otherwise. People really overestimate how many books have been digitized.

Aeolun
0 replies
13h1m

What I want is some easy way to print any website as a book. Some web serials would be best read as a physical book, but it’s often hard or impossible.

vidarh
0 replies
3h14m

I have two projects at the moment. Both slow-going because of other things, but one is the third in a series and I'm hopeful it will reach (very) low thousands based on the performance of the previous ones (over a period of years, not quickly; it's niche SF), the other is fiction, but will have code fragments in between chapters and I'd consider myself lucky if I sell a dozen. I'm more excited about writing that one...

munificent
0 replies
5m

Reading someone else's book about how to think independently seems like some sort of ironic joke.

I'd love it if the first page was just "Stop reading other people's thoughts and go think." And then the rest of the pages are blank.

datascienced
0 replies
13h20m

Or in other words you are doing research, a bit like a PhD and the book is a byproduct!

Like how HN was recently talking about 8 hours to code the first time, but half hour to retype the same code from memory the next day. The code is almost an small (but critical) artefact.

bombcar
20 replies
20h58m

The entire book industry rides on the backs of bibles, hobbits, and extremely ravenous caterpillars.

Seems almost poetic, somehow.

vundercind
14 replies
20h31m

I gotta admit: I rarely make time for any recent fiction. Too busy catching up on the last 5,000 years. I don’t expect that to change before I die.

Film has a similar problem—there are plausibly low-thousands existing films worth my time, a whole lot of them 30+ years old. I could never watch a film made after 2000 and not run out of good entertainment in my lifetime. They’re damn lucky the Mouse got copyright extended to a century or more.

pests
5 replies
16h53m

There are gems coming out today that will be considered great works by our descendants.

By avoiding current authors or media you miss out on the cultural story and critique/commentary that influences all our media. Sure, the last 5000 years are interesting, but isn't right now pretty amazing too? You might accidently read the best book ever written but you won't know until history plays out. But I think it's important to see how recent history has shaped the narrative of the worlds authors in today's world.

Weve lived through a lot of major events. Everyone does. But these are our events.

samspot
1 replies
2h31m

Yeah, if you like sorting garbage. Which of the 1.5 million books published this year will you read? People routinely hide money in mattresses, so why not head to the landfill and start looking?

I sometimes read/watch/play something if a friend recommends it. But I've no time/interest in sorting through the random deluge of media in the hope of finding diamonds. I'll let someone else find the diamond and tell me about it.

bombcar
0 replies
55m

I'm trying to think back over "new releases" that I've read, and ... all of them have been by authors that I had already enjoyed reading some of their works.

It would have to be a technical book on a subject I'm interested in (and even then moderately rare) or something that someone I know well personally strongly recommended.

gverrilla
1 replies
6h51m

There are gems coming out today that will be considered great works by our descendants.

Wow. Can't wait for the next Harry Potter / Avatar / Celebrity book / Spiderman movie !!!!11!!!1! Great works!

but isn't right now pretty amazing too?

No.

pests
0 replies
4h19m

Why be so negative? Live a little.

vundercind
0 replies
16h3m

I’m not avoiding them, but “rando probably-just-ok new thing” versus any of hundreds of major classics I haven’t made it to yet… it’s tough to pick the new thing very often.

[edit] or, hell, not even major. Odds that a recommended-by-people-online got-some-hype-in-review-rags new book is gonna make me happier to have read it than, say, a 2nd-tier Maugham or Faulkner or something? Not great.

bombcar
3 replies
20h10m

It’s also a highly effective sorting algorithm - anything still talked about ten years after it came out is probably worth some time.

I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively quickly see all US animated kids movies …

vundercind
1 replies
14h17m

I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively quickly see all US animated kids movies

Decent or better ones… maybe.

There’s a deep bench of poor-to-terrible animated kids’ movies that were straight to VHS/DVD/streaming. For god’s sake, there are like nine Land Before Time movies alone.

bombcar
0 replies
3h5m

There's a surprisingly large number of direct to DVD/VHS animated movies you just cannot find ... anywhere. Not on streaming, not at the library.

It's hard to even find a list; and some are pretty decent, for what they are.

matwood
2 replies
19h43m

And if you add in TV shows, there's more great content out there than I'll ever have time to watch.

vundercind
1 replies
18h45m

Video games, too. I live through the 90s yet my backlog includes thousands of hours of reputedly-amazing games from that decade that I didn’t get to at the time.

bombcar
0 replies
17h45m

To be fair the awesomeness of many blockbuster games could be condensed way down with little harm to the game (e.g., Final Fantasy without all the random battles).

greenie_beans
0 replies
20h18m

read "the sarah book" or "crapalachia" by scott mcclananhan if you want to read fiction from a living author that should be included in your reading list for the past 5k years of language arts.

ginko
1 replies
11h13m

The entire book industry rides on the backs of bibles, hobbits, and extremely ravenous caterpillars.

Have to say I'm kind of surprised about the bibles part. Aren't those usually printed by smaller church-associated publishers?

bombcar
0 replies
3h2m

There are some dedicated publishers that make bibles (most any Christian publishing house will have a bible of some sort) but the big names on Amazon or the bookstore are from the big houses (often under an imprint, mind you).

jackstraw14
0 replies
20h40m

how many years of print dominance?

welcome our overlords.

fmajid
0 replies
18h21m

Maybe Gutenberg was right on his market positioning after all.

ZhadruOmjar
0 replies
14h52m

I'm glad my recent bible purchase can fund everyone else's hobby books.

sigio
17 replies
21h3m

No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based.

Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)

constantcrying
14 replies
21h0m

Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc.

The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?

vundercind
4 replies
20h58m

50 or 100 years ago, people read a hell of a lot more fiction than they do now.

constantcrying
2 replies
20h57m

I suspect in the past they also read far more nonfiction.

vundercind
1 replies
20h55m

I wouldn’t bet on it, unless we’re counting user-generated posts online, and clickbait “articles”. Which, maybe we should.

[edit] JFC I misread your sense of “read”, I think we agree.

constantcrying
0 replies
20h41m

Updated my post. I don't think I encountered that "bug" in the English language before.

matwood
0 replies
20h54m

True for fiction books. But if you think about fiction generally, as the poster said, the medium has changed. People still love fiction, but now it's movies and shows.

sigio
4 replies
20h59m

As I said, subscriptions, not buying

constantcrying
3 replies
20h57m

What is the Spotify of books?

exe34
2 replies
20h50m

Amazon/Adobe DRM? They can stop working at any time.

constantcrying
1 replies
20h48m

Neither of these provides books as a subscription service as far as I am aware.

skydhash
0 replies
20h34m

Amazon has Kindle Unlimited and O'Reilly have/had Safari

paulddraper
1 replies
20h40m

Ebooks and audiobooks.

constantcrying
0 replies
20h37m

As far as I can tell eBooks aren't significantly more popular than physical books. Surely the publishers cited in the article wouldn't have neglected that topic if it was actually a major revenue stream.

As far as audiobooks go I don't know. Do you have any numbers?

KeplerBoy
1 replies
20h56m

It seems obvious that books lost some market share.

People have a limited amount of time for entertainment and have a lot more choice between Netflix, YouTube, Books and thousands of other things than they did back then.

constantcrying
0 replies
20h55m

Yes, that is what I meant. Books as a medium is just a much smaller industry with far fewer customers.

paulpauper
0 replies
16h56m

"No one buys ________", except for those who do, which is still a lot of people. So tired of these overgeneralizations.

koito17
0 replies
20h37m

n = 1, but I purchase physical books, comics, references, etc. under two circumstances:

- cannot find an easy way to de-DRM media available on online stores. I want the ability to copy epub files across my devices and read offline.

- the digital version is a poor-quality scan. This frequently happens with comics.

This is embarrassing to discuss normally, but an additional perk of physical comics and light novels is that I can look at the obi and get reminded what I was doing in the past, where I was in the past, what was happening in the past, etc. especially for those which I have finished reading. The subset of my friends with similar interests as me tend to discard the obi, since it becomes bothersome while reading. I have the habit of removing the obi while I am reading something, then add it back when finished reading the entire thing. Things like this can't really be done with digital media, especially subscriptions.

lrvick
11 replies
20h32m

Most books today are sold with DRM and when the DRM servers are deactivated the books stop working.

This happened with the Microsoft ebooks store and has happened with countless other DRM media.

Sometimes books are automatically revised, or censored. Sometimes accounts holding DRM licenses are deleted or deactivated by mistake.

The only way to actually own a book these days is to buy it on paper, or from one of the rare few publishers that do not use DRM.

If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book scanner or send it to a scanning service.

npilk
3 replies
19h58m

If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book scanner or send it to a scanning service.

Well, technically there's a third option...

tmtvl
2 replies
19h20m

Yeah, but if I _could_ write my own, I wouldn't be in the market to buy one, right?

dredmorbius
0 replies
11h49m

Fourth option, then.

TheCapeGreek
0 replies
12h37m

I think the post is talking about sailing the high seas...

stubish
1 replies
11h34m

Most Kindle books are not sold with DRM, for many years now. I don't know about other platforms. Readers yelled at publishers until they stopped enabling it, and turned out it didn't make enough difference to keep annoying their core customer base.

lrvick
0 replies
8h3m

Never seen a "download DRM-free ePub" option for any Amazon book url but if they have that, the Internet seems to not know about it on a cursory search.

If you mean it downloads the book exclusively to the Kindle app in a proprietary format only that app can read, then it is just a different form of DRM a user has to hack around.

doug_durham
1 replies
20h12m

The books sold through Apple Books are all sold without DRM. That's pretty standard now.

daveoc64
0 replies
15h7m

That's not at all standard.

Most books Apple sells come with DRM.

This section of the Apple documentation explains how a publisher can control whether DRM is used for their book:

https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/support/30-manage-book...

All of the major eBook stores sell books with and without DRM (including Amazon Kindle, Rakuten Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play Books).

Whether an individual book includes DRM on all of these stores is down to the publisher, and you won't typically see books from the major publishers offered without DRM.

II2II
1 replies
20h5m

I am fairly certain that most, if not all, mass market ebooks use DRM tied to the software. If the servers go, the books will be fine for as long as the software continues to work.

There are also authors and publishers who offer books without DRM.

Please note: I do not like DRM. I simply view disinformation as a good way to loose good will from those who would otherwise support a cause.

lrvick
0 replies
11h48m

There exist select few major publishers that sell without DRM, particularly when looking at fiction.

Microsoft is a noteworthy example of a major ebook seller shutting down ebook accs: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3k3wkk/microsoft-ebooks-will...

DRM being tied to the software is effectively still the same end result. Software maker for any number of reasons stops publishing new versions of the app and they become unlisted from appstores eventually for failing to use recent SDKs or patching security flaws and users still cannot read their books.

So you depend on a company paying someone to run a DRM server or you depend on them paying someone to maintain an app and a CI/CD system. Sooner or later when the DRM content supplier stops paying for the infrastructure, your book stops working one way or the other.

WolfeReader
0 replies
19h54m

Kobo and Google Play both tell you up-front if a book has DRM or not. And very often - not "rare"-ly as you claim - buying directly from the publisher results in a DRM-free ebook.

AlbertCory
9 replies
20h41m

I've asked a number of agents online for two numbers:

1) How many unsolicited queries have you received, in whatever time period you like: month, quarter, year, forever?

2) How many turned into published books?

None will provide that data, but I strongly suspect that the answer to #2 is "zero."

They'll happily quote you BS quantities, like "a bunch" or "a handful."

So as this article says, they spend their time chasing celebrities, online influencers, and friends of friends. And not making a whole lot of money anyway.

tptacek
4 replies
18h58m

I don't think this is what the article says at all. It says that publishers make all their money celebrities and the backlist, and that those titles pay for all the midlist titles, most of which don't recoup their advances.

It's not like publishers can simply decide to focus on new and midlist authors. The books that sell, sell. The top line of this article is well described by its title.

AlbertCory
3 replies
18h39m

No, you're quite mistaken. The agents try to divine what the publishers want, which is, as you said, "celebrities [and the backlist], and that those titles pay for all the midlist titles, most of which don't recoup their advances."

It's not like publishers can simply decide to focus on new and midlist authors

who said anything about what they should or shouldn't do?

But since you brought it up: the same applies to the music business, as Ted Gioia (my original source). At one time in history, everyone in the music business was focused on selling more music, so nurturing and promoting new artists was good business. They didn't simply look at "what are people buying now?"

tptacek
2 replies
18h34m

I have what the article says to go on, and the article contradicts you. But I know a bit more about the music industry, and it is absolutely the case that midlist music acts don't --- and never did --- generate enough record sales to cover their nut. There's a famous Steve Albini zine article that indicts the recording industry for never recouping an advance, and a less famous David Lowery article that explains why nobody could reasonably expect any of these titles to recoup.

It may be that we don't disagree at all, and are just talking past each other? At any rate: my only point here is, like startup investing and the music industry, we're talking about a hits business. And they aren't hits businesses because a cabal of cigar-chomping executives wants them to be that; they're that way because the median investment never recoups, and so the winners have to pay for the losers.

AlbertCory
1 replies
2h43m

We're done here. Trolls get one answer, and you've had yours.

tptacek
0 replies
1h48m

Just in case it's helpful: I think you're going to find this approach to dealing with disagreements on HN isn't going to work out to your benefit, or to the benefit of whatever point you're trying to make.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kyleyeats
3 replies
20h38m

You used to pitch your book to publishers. Now you pitch your audience.

x0x0
0 replies
12h35m

That's always been the case; it's merely a proxy for likely sales. It used to be that audience was demonstrated by previous sales; now it can be proved by being a celebrity, twitch/twitter/instagram/whatever followers, etc.

greenie_beans
0 replies
12h58m

this is true for non-fiction for sure

AlbertCory
0 replies
18h37m

I think that's true, actually.

cm2012
8 replies
15h5m

319 comments and I don't see the simple fact that the article title is dead wrong.

We are going through a massive book boom right now: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLSGuGOWoAArd-K.jpg:large.

Book sales are the highest they've been in 20 years lol. So all the comments mourning books can relax.

shkkmo
7 replies
14h34m

The title is provocative clickbait, but the actual point is this:

These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

Given that spending per capita, adjusted for intlation is only a couple of percent higher than they were 20 years ago, the "boom" isn't particularly impressive.

outop
3 replies
11h58m

But there are more books published than ever before.

Most of the books that sell hundreds of copies wouldn't have been published in the past. If you write a niche book about something and a few hundred people read it, that seems great. If you're (stochastically) subsidized by a few huge hits and bestsellers, that also seems great. People are reading the Bible, Harry Potter and celebrity memoirs? Great too, I'm sure they are enjoying them. Possibly many of those people have not chosen those books in preference to other more "worthy" books but in preference to other pastimes.

The only problem I can see is if you wrote a book and had it published hoping it would be this year's runaway success, and it wasn't. Fine, but someone's book was. By its nature not everyone can achieve this.

jampekka
1 replies
7h44m

It's a bit weird that those niche books are sold - as opposed to just published free with maybe print-on-demand for those who want hard copies.

The authors don't make (practically) any money out of those books. Even the publisher probably doesn't. Vast majority of books aren't written to get any significant money (from sales at least), unless the author is delusional.

It's probably a kind of status thing and cultural lag. To get a publishing deal is a "stamp of approval" that it's a "real book" from a "real author" that has passed the gatekeeper. And that a copy of it costs something means it's not worthless, unlike e.g. the Linux kernel.

vidarh
0 replies
3h16m

It's a combination of status and an attempt at an investment, and I guess somewhat of a lottery ticket.

There are also costs involved in a quality release even of a self-published novel. You want a cover. It's not expensive, but unless you're a talented artist it will show if you do it yourself. You can avoid paying for an editor, but it will generally be noticeable (you might have near perfect grammar and orthography, but you will miss things). If a publisher is going to put their name on it, those things will be at least a bit more expensive, and people tend to want to at least try to recoup some or all of costs even if they don't expect a significant return.

And if you want to turn writing into something more, you want to build an audience, and you want at least some signal of how large a portion of that audience are actually people prepared to pay, so that maybe next time your publisher is willing to put a little bit of money into marketing.

But yes, a lot of books could just as well be free. But vast quantities of writing - including fiction - is also released for free. Turns out there's signalling the other way too. It's hard to get people to read anything, but for at least some parts of the market, it's harder to convince them something free is worth their time.

samspot
0 replies
2h38m

I also read the article and felt that the tone was weird. Much of what's described is unsurprising in a for-profit business. The fact that these big companies are willing to publish so many unprofitable books seems like a good thing to me. And if you don't want to work with big publishing there are many avenues.

I'm not sure what the author wants from the big publishers. Should they stop publishing hits, spend more money marketing books that won't sell, and then declare bankruptcy?

I do appreciate the opportunity to learn more about what a bad deal traditional publishing can be for authors. Seems like valuable information for anyone who wants to start writing professionally.

ar_lan
1 replies
13h21m

The title is provocative clickbait, but the actual point is this.

It's an aside, but this is just so frustrating we have succumbed to this level. In principle I don't even want to read the article because the title is ridiculous, but on the other hand, they wouldn't generate any traffic if they don't because our brains are too fixated on "drama" and "controversy" that clickbait titles generate.

CaptainFever
0 replies
13h0m

We need DeArrow but for the Internet.

nottorp
0 replies
11h27m

Nobody cries about the poor movie industry only making money from superhero movies, do they?

WolfeReader
8 replies
20h59m

Haven't libraries already been a "Netflix of books" for millenia now?

lolinder
2 replies
19h51m

Most libraries that people have access to are more like "Disney+ for books". They have a limited selection of extremely mainstream books. If you're happy to make do with whatever they have on offer then you're fine, but if you want something specific you'll have to go out and buy it.

Back in the DVD days and before everyone broke ranks and tried to start their own service, the thing that made Netflix great was that no matter what you wanted they had it. Having no retail footprint meant they could stock everything without having to compromise. Libraries don't have that advantage.

zeroonetwothree
0 replies
17h34m

We are lucky in CA at least that we have Link+ which gives you access to millions of books.

wolverine876
0 replies
18h34m

The Internet Archive has a pretty big lending library.

paxys
1 replies
20h7m

How much of the population has access to well stocked libraries?

dredmorbius
0 replies
8h43m

Within the US, virtually any resident of a large city or major metropolitan area, which is over 85% of the population: <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/12/us/census-results-da...>.

This is also one of the areas in which the Internet has actually delivered on early promise (though the success has been a long time coming, and remains precarious): the Internet Archive offers access to over 20 million records, and aims to have a web page for every book ever published. Note that this still isn't full access to all material, but it's quite good.

<https://openlibrary.org/about>

The US Library of Congress has also been expanding its public access, as have other large public libraries (the New York Public Library notably). LoC also have specific programmes aimed at disabled readers such as its NLS BARD programme for the visually- and reading-disabled.

<https://federalnewsnetwork.com/open-datatransparency/2022/02...>

<https://www.loc.gov/nls/how-to-enroll/sign-up-for-bard-and-b...>

AlbertCory
1 replies
20h48m

Mine doesn't have this book, anyway.

$94 for a used copy /s

jbverschoor
0 replies
20h45m

Did you mean to read <insert related book that's not in the subscription>?

bee_rider
0 replies
20h51m

Some libraries have movie sections, making them the Netflix of DVDs, in an odd twist.

dakiol
7 replies
20h57m

So, I usually think in terms of longevity. I do own some books, because in case computers don’t work anymore, well I can still read good stuff. I have plenty of PDFs/epubs in my laptop because the internet may not work anymore anytime. I do have some stuff in the cloud, but just for convenience (I don’t care if those files disappear).

Same with music, movies and video games. I want to be able to “run” stuff offline. Electricity is still a big dependency (i’m looking into solar panels)

bigstrat2003
6 replies
20h50m

I'm the same way, and also: I want to not have to pay a subscription fee forever. Once I have what I want, then that's it! I'm don't need to spend another dime. But if I use Spotify or whatever, I have to keep paying forever. It is a much worse deal.

matwood
3 replies
20h45m

The difference between music and books is time investment. New music comes out all the time, and I'm always discovering old music. A subscription works great for music because I can listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider myself a reader.

quectophoton
0 replies
7h23m

A subscription works great for music because I can listen to so many songs. Books not so much, and I consider myself a reader.

It can work for books too, kinda. You can check "J-Novel Club" for an existing example. Chapters are translated in parts, and each part is released ASAP to subscribers, before the whole thing is translated (though they're clear that it's still a WIP).

It's also extremely common for... uh... "gray-zone indie translators" to translate web novels from Japanese into English, and release the translations first to Patreon supporters, and a week later to everyone else.

Granted, everything I'm saying is very specific to the niche of JP novels.

bombcar
0 replies
20h41m

And even with books it becomes much easier to say “I’ll reread the lord of the rings on this flight” than it is to take a wild risk on an unknown book and author.

bigstrat2003
0 replies
1h0m

Yeah, if you're frequently getting new music then a subscription makes sense. My music library is pretty much static. I don't like the vast majority of new music, and I've already gotten the vast majority of old music that I care about. My music purchases are something like $30 (at most, usually much less) per year, which is way cheaper than Spotify.

criddell
1 replies
20h13m

Do you think of cable/satellite/streaming tv in the same way as Spotify?

bigstrat2003
0 replies
1h3m

I pay for streaming 90% because my wife wants to, and 10% because it's the only way I can legally watch things in some cases. So I would say yes, in that I would rather ditch those too, but no in that they have uses I can't replace at this time.

WillAdams
6 replies
20h45m

Turn it around:

How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read?

How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this?

Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books traditionally take up has been replaced by:

- encyclopedias --- Wikipedia

- magazines/newspapers --- Facebook and social media

- dime store novels --- fan fiction and webcomics

Time was that the way to be successful w/ a self-published book was to manage to get it bought by the ~9,000 library systems in the U.S. --- how many of these books are being purchased by libraries?

jwells89
2 replies
19h50m

I believe another factor is frequency of moving, because that’d disincline people from buying significant amounts of any kind of heavy and/or bulky media, of which books are both. More than a small bookshelf’s worth is a real pain to haul around.

eszed
1 replies
15h47m

This. I donated half a lifetime's collection of physical books a few years ago, when I moved into my girlfriend's apartment. I kept books which are either a) impossible to get electronically (mostly technical or academic works), or b) worthless on screen (mostly large-format photography and art books, or c) for which I have a sentimental attachment to the physical artifact (a couple of first editions; some gifts; some that bring back particular memories).

It's so freeing! I read a LOT, and being able to curate a massive library in Calibre, and keep >3k books on my Kindle, is (for me) entirely superior to lugging around heavy physical objects.

I rip DRM off of (most) every ebook I buy, and back up the files, so I'm not worried about losing access, either. Even if the apocalypse arrives my Kindle + a solar charger fit in my bug-out bag better than a box of books.

Tor3
0 replies
13h42m

I've done the DRM ripping in the past, but from what I've understood Calibre or other tools are unable to do that for the latest DRM variants Amazon is using. Is that correct? I would like to back up my entire Kindle collection as it is now.

ozim
1 replies
20h18m

In Poland we publish 9000 new books each year, of course initial runs are like 500-1k copies. Not sure how it breaks down in detail on types like science publications and else but average person reads 1 book a year, avid readers read 7 and above but they are 1% of the population.

Just some stats as I watched discussion on this topic. I think the question was rhetorical but feels like a nice thing to add.

WillAdams
0 replies
19h53m

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I was reaching for.

Curious what the distribution is for types of books.

In the U.S., bookstores lose money almost the entire year --- only making money for the Christmas holidays.

roughly
0 replies
20h10m

How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read?

How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this?

I mean, the thing is, people aren't reading books, they're reading instagram. We haven't substituted one knowledge-accumulating method for another, we've replaced books with social media. If you want to talk about which one generates or propagates more information-as-knowledge, that's an interesting conversation, but I think the effective mechanism here is someone figured out how to hypercharge the dopamine roller-coaster to a degree that books just can't compete.

Kon-Peki
5 replies
20h17m

I'm in a very heavy library family; we are checking out and reading a few hundred books per year between all of us.

Yet we still buy a few books, and I bet that if we made an inventory of the books we currently own that are in the house, it would number in the hundreds. But... most were purchased secondhand. I take my daughter to the bookstore every few months; it is always busy. While she is browsing, I also look around. I'd buy half a dozen or more books on each visit if it weren't for the price. At retail price, books aren't a good deal. Even buying a paper copy of a public domain book will run $15-20. Why?

omoikane
2 replies
19h21m

$15-20

US book prices seem weirdly expensive. I just sampled the prices from the best sellers here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/bestsellers/books/

The US prices averages out to ~$15, while the Japanese prices average out to $10. You might say most of that is due to the current exchange rate (1 USD = 154 JPY), but then most books listed on Amazon Japan's "novels" best sellers seemed to be priced around ~$6 USD (~900 JPY), compared to the $18-22 in Amazon.com's "literature and fiction" list.

We can try the same exercise with

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/

and the average comes out to ~$11 USD (~£9 GBP)

Ray20
1 replies
14h25m

Aren't in Japan average selled fiction book is way smaller?

omoikane
0 replies
13h34m

Did you mean page count? For the novels I read, 200-300 per volume seems common. This seems comparable to the English novels I have, so it feels like less money for roughly same amount of content.

Because many light novels come in series that are spread over several volumes, it's arguable that it costs more money to finish a story because you have to read all these volumes instead of one monolithic tome. I buy the volumes one by one as they are released and don't feel that the individual books are that expensive, but someone catching up on an old series might feel different.

If you mean physical size, the average English books does seem physically larger than the average Japanese book.

HenryBemis
1 replies
20h9m

book will run $15-20

Everybody needs to get paid, and everybody needs to make a profit.

The folks that store the books (think Wholesale), the movers/couriers, the retail that has to pay rent/employees/etc _and_ make a profit.

The consider that (depending on the country) there is a VAT on that book. It slowly adds up.

I remember in Brighton back in the 90s I had found a second hand bookstore, that had 5x the books per sqm comparing to the Barnes & Noble in the center of London. B&N had wide corridors, the shelves on the perimeter were all the way to the ceiling, but the non-walled ones were 1.5m high. And considering that they wanted the books to look cool, they were nicely spaced.

Now when you compare this to the second hand bookstore, where presentation is not 'a thing'.. you got many-many more books per sqm, and the authors/publishers don't need to get paid again. But still.. a second hand book will always been 1/3 to 1/4 of a new book (from own experience).

EDIT: I sometimes think that if my life takes a very dark turn, and for whatever reason I end up poor and alone, I will find the smallest/cheapest possible village that has a public library back to my country of origin, and I will be spending max amount of hours in that library.. free wifi, free heating/cooling, and ALL the books I can read(hey, my name is Henry Bemis after all!!)

eszed
0 replies
15h27m

Off-topic, but wow there were some good used bookstores in Brighton. I think I know the one you mean, but the quirkiest was the one with a massive pile (literally a pile) of unshelved, uncategorized books in the basement. Hardbacks were £1, paperbacks 50p. It smelled faintly of mould down there, and there were some chairs and beanbags (the beanbags were too dodgy for me to sit in, lol) around the edges, so we'd sneak in cans of beer and spend the afternoon going through the pile and reading what we found. Once or twice the owner shouted down the stairs that he was going to the pub and to turn off the lights and make sure the door was locked when we left.

Sometimes I miss being young and poor. I'm not sure I'd enjoy spending a day like that anymore, and I'm not sure why.

thaumasiotes
4 replies
20h39m

> Obviously, given the number of people searching on Amazon for products, that gives them a huge advantage because when people go onto Amazon, they—if the book isn’t there for what they are searching for, they could create that book.

This is a really weird thing to say. It seems to assume that people are indifferent to the quality of the writing in the books they read.

eszed
3 replies
15h18m

Looking at the best-selling Amazon-published titles leaves the impression that this is the case.

thaumasiotes
2 replies
13h59m

The observation in the essay that "the romance category has already gone independent" also leaves that impression - for the romance category.

But the fact that one of two profitable genres is "franchise authors" suggests the opposite. Franchise authors become franchise authors by producing high-quality writing.

eszed
1 replies
13h46m

What does "franchise author" mean? I'm not familiar with the term.

thaumasiotes
0 replies
11h35m

It means an author whose books do well. Examples given in the essay include Tom Clancy and Stephen King.

mlsu
4 replies
20h12m

Books are a vestigial organ. Nobody uses books as their primary mode of accessing information about the world anymore.

What is interesting is that the cultural mores around this vestigial organ have persisted to such a great degree. Harry Potter Books are a psycho-social mechanism of self-construction more than an actual work of fiction. The phenomenon of "I am a bookish person who reads Harry Potter" as a psychological thing that people do is larger and more significant than the actual story of Harry the young wizard. Likewise, the phenomenon of "I am a successful luminary who has written a book" is more important than the actual content of the book itself. Celebrities paying ghostwriters to write books and going to book signings to sign a book for people who will never actually read the book. A perfectly airtight simulacra.

sandspar
2 replies
14h34m

You're talking about midwits or whatever. Millions of very intelligent people still get most of their knowledge from books. Books remain the highest octane fuel.

Spivak
1 replies
2h5m

It's always fun to see "parent's point immediately proven in the replies" happen in the wild.

sandspar
0 replies
1h24m

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

zilti
0 replies
19h45m

Most Harry Potter fans have never even read the books, but just seen the films, further supporting your argument

ergonaught
4 replies
20h20m

It’s me. I’m No One.

Because I buy them every week. So does my wife. I guess we are No One.

tolciho
0 replies
19h54m

Being no one might help you escape that cyclops.

stubish
0 replies
10h50m

How does it feel to be part of the 1%? You are the publishing industry equivalent of a whale.

mr90210
0 replies
16h29m

I ordered 3 books yesterday, so I was a bit surprised by the headline. Amazon might disagree with that headline.

devbent
0 replies
2h54m

Books are too expensive to buy every week in any quantity greater than 1.

I read 7-12 new books a week to my son, I'd go bankrupt if it wasn't for libraries.

(We typically read 5-10 books a day, ur the 12 books we get from the library each week have an uneven distribution of what gets read again and again).

Presumably as my son gets older we'll move to books that take longer to read and the absolute # will go down.

Back when I was single and didn't have a kid, I'd go through 2 or 3 long form fiction books a week. At that point in life, Half Priced Books (the book store chain with that name) was my financial savior.

Books are expensive. A kids picture book is easily $15-$20, with outliers costing even more. Whenever I do go book shopping with my son we end up spending almost $200.

vidarh
2 replies
9h26m

I would not. There's not much indication that this curve and the dominance of a small number of top sellers is a new thing.

chromanoid
1 replies
7h18m

I think most cultural goods compete in hit-driven markets. That is a given. But as far as I understood the article claims the downfall of books in general. And that is not true, in my opinion at least. Books are bought as web novel or viewed on Kindle Unlimited or in general as self-published endeavors. And as the link in my post states, KU pays good, Patreon works as well. There also emerge more and more paid and sponsored newsletters etc. All completely independent to classical publishing channels.

vidarh
0 replies
3h29m

Books are bought as web novel or viewed on Kindle Unlimited or in general as self-published endeavors.

I've seen no data to suggest this is true at least in the sense it's some sort of major revenue shift. "Traditional" - so non-web novel - type e-books make up about 20% of sales of traditional books, and this has been very slow to change in recent years.

As far as I can tell - and this might well be way off, so I'm happy to see better numbers, the web novel market might maybe be somewhere between 3%-5% of the size of the traditional book market. Both likely can make up substantially more of indie authors earnings - it's certainly far easier for me to sell to Kindle users than getting my books into bookstores, and so paper sales largely come from Amazon too.

The webnovel market is really hard to justify spending time on unless you write in a very specific set of genres, and is prepared to death-march until you get traction. That's fine - some people want to do that.

But KU etc. does not pay well either for most. They pay well for a similarly minuscule fraction of writers, and next to nothing for most. For my part, I'm considering pulling my stuff from there, as it prevents you from putting up your ebooks elsewhere.

This isn't really surprising, sure - it's a market where it's now trivial to enter but still hard to get both good and find a product market fit. So you have a flood of people churning out vast volumes, most of which isn't very good, some of which is good but just up against a deluge of amazing work.

I don't know about the US, but I know there was a survey in the UK a couple of years back that showed that in the UK the average full-time writer, irrespective of platform, earns well below minimum wage, and the vast majority of writers are not full-time. Most full-time writers in the UK at least depend on the income of a partner to be able to afford to write full-time. And that average is pulled significantly up by the top end of the market.

Some people do better on KU or serialized venues than traditional books, sure.

With respect to the click-bait headline, it's not so much that all that much has changed, but that this is the most we've seen the publishing industry numbers laid bare.

And "no one" really do buy books in the sense that reading "books" be they traditional, or webnovel.com or other serial formats, is something most people just don't do very often.

TOMDM
0 replies
10h42m

My favourite web novel author is currently making around half a million a year on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/Sleyca

Really happy for them, the story is great.

paxys
3 replies
19h25m

according to data from the Authors Guild

Despite the narrative that copyright holders in every industry like to push, a pirated copy is not equal to a lost sale. Their actual losses are likely a small fraction of that number.

owlninja
2 replies
16h52m

Is the thinking that the person who pirated it was never going to buy it anyways?

paxys
1 replies
16h8m

They may or may not have bought it, but the calculations of "lost sales" assume that 100% of them would have bought it at full price, which is absurd. I'd wager it is closer to 10%.

eszed
0 replies
15h22m

In my lifetime I've easily bought 100x more books used than new, which (from their perspective) is economically indistinguishable from piracy. Any of those "lost sales" estimates strike me as entirely bogus.

Brajeshwar
4 replies
15h46m

I used to buy and read a lot of physical books. Around 2013-204, I started moving to eBooks, and Amazon Kindle played a significant role in my journey. But a couple of years later, I had an epiphany while discussing books with my daughter, “I never see you read books. You are just reading on your computer (kindle) or the phone and are not reading.”

Since then, I have returned to reading physical books with an approximate ratio of 1:5 against digital ones. I have kinda rule/understanding with my daughters -- you have unlimited access to books that you can read, and you also get extra pocket money for reading them. Of course, it is OK not to finish a book, but in that case, a few cool-down days before buying another one.

Yes, buy and read physical books. I believe, the return is a magnitude higher for everyone than the loss it does to anything. If you have kids, read more physical books in front of them. Encourage them to read physical books. They are less distracting and help the kids focus.

Five years ago, I wrote a story about it. https://story.oinam.com/2018/why-physical-books-matter/

kstrauser
1 replies
14h17m

They are less distracting and help the kids focus.

That’s such an incredibly personal preference though. It’s far easier for me to read with an ereader when I don’t have to have 2 hands holding a heavier hunk of paper wants to close itself if I let go for a moment. I have a huge book collection but I’ve switched almost entirely to ebooks because I find the ergonomics so much better. Physically fighting with dead tree media is more distracting than my ereader.

The_Colonel
0 replies
11h6m

It happened to me multiple times that I bought a real paper book, but the ergonomics was so bad, I've pirated the book and read it on my kindle instead (since I bought it I feel entitled to get the e-variant). Especially paperbacks are bad - tiny letters, yellow low-contrast paper, difficult to hold open.

Reading good night stories to children is even more challenging, since it's usually dark. Bringing some extra light is annoying and distracting for the child.

twelvedogs
0 replies
10h16m

i used to read a lot but buying paper books was a real pain for me, i read hundreds of books on the kindle but figured out i could just slap a video on my phone and actually sleep.

since then i've read maybe 15 books in the last couple years and my kids never see me reading, however we've read to them and had them read to us for their whole life and they now both read independently for fun. i don't think leading by example is anywhere near as important as reading with your kids

Aeolun
0 replies
13h5m

If you have kids, read more physical books in front of them.

I think this part is so important. I want to show my kids that reading is fun, but instead what they see is me looking at my phone all the time. There’s nothing differentiating reading on my phone from watching youtube videos from their perspective. Ereaders help to some extend, but only a bit.

keyle
3 replies
20h44m

The same could be said about the game industry and the music industry. 1% of the industry thrives while the rest is a sinking stone.

That said I bought three books this week, but it's a rare occurrence... and I'm pretty sure they're re-printed by Amazon.

yreg
2 replies
20h26m

Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever?

Or do you mean boardgames? Those seem to be doing alright as well though.

keyle
0 replies
19h48m

I've made and shipped games. Just look at the 30 games that come out on steam every day of the week.

Ray20
0 replies
14h30m

Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever?

Yes, but people also make more games than ever, and this "more" is way bigger.

emodendroket
3 replies
13h34m

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

I know this is in some way an irritating thing to say, but this is exactly what I would have guessed before I read the article. It's cool to see numbers put to it but I don't think this was a secret.

I am struck by the coda where the antitrust intervention did nothing to preserve a healthy market. Kind of a common story.

outop
2 replies
11h53m

How is this an unhealthy market?

Everyone can easily access the books they want. People choose to read the Bible and Harry Potter because that's what they want to read.

Of course, it might be a shame that we all coordinate on reading a few hits that everyone else is reading rather than check out some underappreciated books. But is the market really to blame for that? Amazon makes it easier than ever to find all the books. Publishers, as pointed out in the quote, are publishing tons of books that don't make it, in part because of a belief that it's a good thing to do. It's easier to self publish than ever before. And social media is often playing a big role in discovering the huge hits that everyone else is reading - many are not the books pushed by the marketing machine, but word-of-mouth successes that get discovered and shared by a huge group of dedicated, articulate readers.

If there were hardly any books selling 3-digit numbers, that to me would suggest an unhealthy market. The presence of lots and lots selling that many seems very positive.

emodendroket
0 replies
2h6m

Their idea of the problem with the proposed merger, making it unhealthy, was that it would reduce the number of players in the market. How is one of the players getting picked apart by private equity instead of merging with a different player a better outcome, then?

dingaling
0 replies
11h22m

Everyone can easily access the books they want.

Not particularly. New niche-interest non-fiction books are expensive ( $60+ ) and tend to have short print runs, after which their price on the second-hand market quickly escalates. And few are available as ebooks.

I've had to let a lot of books pass me by, even before they've been printed, simply because I couldn't afford them.

bachmeier
3 replies
19h18m

The headline isn't accurate. "No One Buys Most Books" maybe, but the article talks about books that sell more than 300,000 copies in a year. 90% of books sell fewer than 2000 copies in a year, but 2000 is actually a decent number, especially considering it will be a lot more than 2000 over the lifetime of the book.

There's more to this as well. You have to factor in that a lot of people write books because they want to say they wrote a book, and others do it because it supports their professional brand, so there was never an intention or expectation of selling a thousand copies.

paulpauper
1 replies
16h54m

Also, the author conflates fiction with non-fiction. No kidding, if you include science books , guides, how-to books, etc. most books do not sell many copies, but they are not expected or intended to. It's not like the market for calculus books is that big. Fiction books by major publishing houses for a general audience still sell a lot.

stubish
0 replies
11h14m

Fiction only sells a lot if you hit the best seller lists. Most books do not, and it has been this way since at least 2000. For most fiction authors, you would make more money at a minimum wage job. You know, all the ones you haven't heard off because they didn't hit the best seller lists.

tptacek
0 replies
18h39m

The article doesn't say these books sell 2000 copies a year; it says they sell 2000 copies, period. Generously assume a $30 new release hardcover cost ("The City Is Up For Grabs", the most recent book I bought, cost $25) and a 20% gross margin for the publisher, and you're talking $35k total to split between the publisher and the author.

It does talk about celebrity books selling some low number of copies within the year of publication. Presumably those books do keep selling at some level for some long tail of the book being in print. But unless books are utterly unlike all other media, 80-90% of the proceeds from selling the book will come during the new release window.

thyrsus
2 replies
20h49m

Does this include technical books? O'Reilly and Manning seem to have substantial customers. Or is the licensing of PDFs excluded from such figures?

bombcar
0 replies
20h43m

Technical books are part of it, and O’Reilly can probably do much more accurate forecasting on their titles than others do, but they still have total reach problems.

If I think of all the technical things I’ve done, there are some I’ve bought lots of books for, and others I’ve never bought a book at all, including some relatively major languages.

_delirium
0 replies
15h38m

The article only covers data for the Big Five publishers, who are: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan.

satvikpendem
2 replies
19h55m

The only major reading I do these days is via audiobooks, I simply read them faster than via visually looking at the page. It might be my attention span, but somehow audio is just faster to literally cram words into the mind at high speed than consciously moving your eyes over a page.

Tor3
1 replies
13h33m

I'm the opposite - I read many times faster than audio, so I have big problems with using e.g. Youtube to get information. It feels agonizingly slow to get the information over. I feel like I could get that in two minutes of reading versus listening for half an hour. When I read novels I take a few pages - depending on what I read - to get my mind into the story, and from then on what's written isn't text on paper (or e-reader) anymore, it's just a story unfolding in my mind. I don't "see" the text.

satvikpendem
0 replies
6h3m

I know what you mean with the last sentence, it feels the same for me when reading text too in that it disappears if I'm engrossed in the story. However, for audio, I listen at 3 to 5x speed so audio can be magnitudes faster than text. You should probably try increasing the speed of your YouTube videos, that's also what I do, plus I use add-ons like SponsorBlock which provide a "skip to video highlight" button as well as cutting out all of the filler content in a video.

pm90
2 replies
17h23m

Theres something rather magical about reading books. Or perhaps Im just an old fart that grew up without the internet.

The article is fascinating but worrying. I do hope the industry survives in some form. I love the experience of reading books. It would be a shame if everything was digital although it seems like an inescapable conclusion after looking at the data in the article…

stubish
0 replies
11h8m

Nothing is going to go all digital, except maybe sales. Print-on-demand means that every ebook can also be a physical trade paperback, if the publisher chooses. Amazon even have a button you can click to give a free copy of the ebook to everyone who buys the printed version (not sure if this encourages printed sales, or more to expose people to the dark side).

droopyEyelids
0 replies
17h16m

Reading, if you’re good at it, is the most sophisticated and powerful form of storytelling, allowing detail and scope far beyond movies or games. And writing is far more accessible and cheaper than any other form of media creation. I think thats the magic.

But it has such a high requirement of education and practice, and demands such a high price in focus and attention. Its no wonder that it doesnt fit most people’s lives.

janandonly
2 replies
8h19m

I'm currently writing a book about the What? How? & Why? of Bitcoin.

For me, the gain and street cred I will receive from having completed a book is invaluable to me personally.

I'm writing this book in Dutch, so I really don't expect any sales. Okay, maybe a few if there was another bull-run and frenzy, but that's not why I am writing this book.

ulfw
1 replies
8h18m

So where is that "Street cred" going to come from when no one knows you have a book because no one bought it?

gverrilla
0 replies
6h42m

So where is that "Street cred" going to come from

I suppose it is constituted by the same substance found in books that people buy, never read, and proudly display nevertheless.

daly
2 replies
15h51m

I have about 6000 books, about 1000 of these are on Kindle.

Of the 6000, most have bookmarks. I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them. I've finished a couple hundred so far. I found my old business cards make perfect bookmarks.

I guess "No one buys books" isn't strictly true.

I tried to write 4 books. I was told that I'd likely sell less that 1000. Beyond that would be considered a major win. I finished one, published it, and have made about $500. It took me months to write.

I love books. I have a copy of "I, Robot" signed by Asimov. I really like books signed by authors.

datadrivenangel
0 replies
15h40m

My book took a year and a half to write and has made about $400 in direct royalties.

I can't precisely quantify the return on investment, but I believe that having the ISBN on my resume has resulted in me getting more work opportunities and/or salary, so it's a pretty good investment. Also people think you're smart for having the stupidity to start writing a book without having the good sense to abandon the project halfway through.

Tor3
0 replies
13h46m

I'm not sure I understand the "I read at least the first 50 pages of most of them". Did you somehow receive 6000 books in one huge batch and you're just checking them out, one by one?

I mean, I've thousands of books in my collection (though I've had to dump a ton of them lately due to space restrictions.. that's sad), and I've read all of them end-to-end. If a book is so bad that I can't finish it.. it does happen with "free" Kindle books, but for my paper book collection I think there are maybe two or three I didn't read all through.

WalterBright
2 replies
17h8m

I've been buying scifi books from thrift stores for a decade or more.

But in the last couple years, there's been a near complete collapse in it. The racks of scifi have abruptly dwindled to a handful of lonely books. The entire book section has dramatically shrunk as well. This is across thrift stores, not just one.

Is it:

1. nobody buys physical books anymore

2. nobody donates physical books anymore

3. donations seem to be driven by estate sales. Maybe the book lovers have already all died out and their estates are liquidated

I don't know. But I'm glad I bought the books when I could.

techsupporter
0 replies
16h53m

nobody donates physical books anymore

It's partially number one but definitely this for me, insofar as thrift stores go. The two thrift stores around me that take books are Goodwill and the Salvation Army and I won't donate anything to them any more.

My book donations go to the neighborhood independent bookstore for them to price and resell and keep their employees paid.

The large chain bookstore near me still has several shelves of science fiction, new release and perennial favorites, so I think at least some are still being made and sold. Hopefully you can find what you seek.

breezeTrowel
0 replies
15h28m

I think there's a fourth option - those little kiosks (like the Little Free Library ones) have started to spring up everywhere so it's a lot easier to just leave one's read books there.

tomgp
1 replies
10h22m

OK, I haven't read the whole thing yet but this bit raised an eyebrow...

These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: _publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies)._

Why do we view this as a vanity project and not the purpose of the whole endeavour? The celebrity books are just to raw material that allow them to dot heir real job; to make books those fragments of human connection widely available to the people who might need them, a service to readers and to future generations that isn't just about making money.

bzhang255
0 replies
1h1m

I read that line as sardonic. The author is pointing out how the economics of publishing are contrary to what we would expect, or perhaps would like.

simonblack
1 replies
19h51m

Paper Books for random-access Technical Reference.

Electronic Books for General 'Beginning-to-End', or 'Story-Telling' reading.

In general, though most books can be either paper or electronic depending on personal convenience at the time. It's not a 'Black and White', 'One Thing or the Other' choice. Both formats are as good as the other if need be.

I use both. "Works for Me."

anigbrowl
0 replies
19h9m

Weird, I have the exact opposite preference. I do like looking things up in paper reference books, but a lot of the time I remember context well enough that I can type a key phrase and have it instantly. I prefer learning from paper, so if it's a scientific paper that's too complex/deep to just skim and longer than 10-15 pages I'll often print it.

Reading for pleasure on the other hand, I will only do on paper. The physicality of the book, down to the wrinkles and texture of the paper, are part of the enjoyment.

paulpauper
1 replies
17h1m

In my essay “Writing books isn’t a good idea” I wrote that, in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.

yaawn..this useless stat again? The author erroneously mixes fiction with non-fiction. Of course, non-fiction from a boutique or niche publishing house will have smaller sales and thus depress the average. This includes such books as "trail guides in California" and so on, or science books. These non-fiction books are never expected to sell many copies and are marketed for a small or specific audience in mind, and there is minimal or no marketing push. So if you include these non-fiction books by tiny publishing houses, of course, most books sell few copies.

Fiction books by major publishing houses marketed to a general audience and with a significant marketing push are expected to sell a lot of copies, and do. Hence the large advances commonly seen for authors who write these type of books.

fsckboy
0 replies
15h3m

the stat is also leaving out an important part of the market, 10,000 books. (I think that's the size of a run of books; the actual number is not important, the vast range between 1000 and 100,000 is)

jaberwooky
1 replies
20h18m

Books are like the wayback machine. You can reread authors as they actually wrote their oeuvres without editing from modern day overzealous publishers who censor or otherwise alter the originals.

zilti
0 replies
16h24m

At least as long as you manage to find an old, not-yet-mutilated version...

grecy
1 replies
20h43m

I've published a few self-published books on Amazon about my global adventures. While sales are not making me rich, they certainly do sell month after month.

bombcar
0 replies
20h40m

Self-publishing avoids the biggest single cost, the advance!

It can actually be moderately successful for the right type of author.

I’ve always thought the “book collection of webcomics/blogs” has to be moderately predictable as to sales.

fifticon
1 replies
13h36m

isnt there a logical twist in all this.. The problem is that there are so many _different_ books. I have a house not exactly filled, but certainly loaded with books. So people certainly buy books. But of each book, I seldomly have more than one or two. It's a bit like random numbers filling the interval 0-1. each number has 0 probability, but they fill out the infinite space 0-1 fully. But how horrible it would be to only have the 10 best selling books. The bible, anyone..

emodendroket
0 replies
13h33m

Is there? Lots of people read books digitally. I am sure more than 50 musical artists reached more than half a million people.

ethbr1
1 replies
20h21m

> Q. And Penguin Random House pays Amazon to improve its search results?

> A. There is something that is available to our publishers, it’s called Amazon Marketing Services, AMS, and all publishers can spend money and give it to Amazon to have hopefully better search results.

> — Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House

Wait, "hopefully better"?

What the hell is Amazon selling, magic publishing advertising snake oil?

If I'm paying for placement, I'd expect something more than hope.

russellbeattie
0 replies
16h58m

It's a protection racket.

Here's how it works: The big companies that pay for AMS get listed ahead of companies that don't in the search results. Since they all pay, it means that the top results are basically ranked the same as if none of them paid. But if you don't pay, your books will appear in the "organic" results - after all the marketed ones - essentially destroying any chance of being seen.

This way Amazon can claim that their search results are fair and algorithmic, protecting them from accusations of monopolistic practices. AMS is a simple paid marketing service, not at all like a tax or protection money, right?

But what's really happening is companies are paying just to make sure they're included somewhere in the top results rather than the organic ones, which no one bothers to look at.

They do the same for their App Store search on Fire TVs. No rev share? Good luck finding that app - even if you search for it by name.

So "hopefully better" is all the publishers are paying for.

dsign
1 replies
14h14m

35 books out of 100 are profitable

I don't think that's right. It's just too good. Imagine that you are an author and maybe you pay one line editor and get beta-readers for free, maybe you do your own cover, and you don't print a large batch of your book and because you are the author, you can't pay yourself an advance. That kind of resourcefulness that a trad publisher can't afford would allow that same 35/100, maybe a little higher, or maybe a little lower, depending on how you do with self-promotion. Still, it means that if you are not a terrible writer, or one who consistently writes stuff nobody wants to read, you will make money with one book out of three. Which I think is too good.

stubish
0 replies
10h56m

I'm pretty sure that means 35% of books covered their advance (ie. authors actually started getting paid royalties). I think it is still about $1 per full price paperback (physical or ebook).

zeroonetwothree
0 replies
17h32m

The 50% being under 12 copies is too implausibly low to believe. Wouldn’t your friends and family alone exceed that?

6LLvveMx2koXfwn
1 replies
20h42m

I buy paper books with cash to prevent tracking of my reading habits.

xg15
0 replies
20h57m

Well, if there's any comfort: The AI will definitely read your book...

watersb
0 replies
10h47m

I have started to buy some technical books again, because the ebook version requires some insane locked down proprietary application to read, or causes the book to self destruct after a few months...

No.

I prefer ebooks for many reasons, and I have purchased thousands of them over the past two decades.

Sometimes a printed book is better for dense technical material. But I'm starting to see textbooks that seem to have been designed as web pages: large x-height, clumsy justification and hyphenation.

No proprietary apps to read a book, please.

vundercind
0 replies
21h0m

Yep. No money in it short of not just getting optioned for TV or film, but an actual released production. Even then, a hit or two likely won’t pay as much as you’d think. Some pretty damn successful authors have boring day jobs, or stopped after a handful of “successful” books that didn’t make them much money and went back to a normal corporate career.

The other option is to crank out (ha, ha) short romance novels like a machine and market like mad. The money’s in hard work at writing porn, or in big broad-audience grand slams, probably written at a junior high reading level, with a small niche supporting a handful of authors in writing based-on-a-true-story stuff (bonus if “true crime” connection) aimed directly at getting optioned for film or tv (but that one’s very hard to break into, studios have some go-to authors for that stuff and you ain’t one of them)

vunderba
0 replies
12h27m

From the article: "The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles"

Well that was a depressing read (no pun intended).

voidUpdate
0 replies
11h1m

Fake news, I bought a book just last week

veunes
0 replies
18m

I can't imagine how I would write essays for university without our library

tstrimple
0 replies
19h46m

I wish my daughters would stop reading books (not really) so I could stop buying them all the time (happy to pay this expense). I was worried for a while because my wife and I are both voracious readers, but none of our children seemed to be developing a similar love for literature. That changed practically overnight. They went from Anime to Manga to YA lit to full blown novels in less than a year. Their tastes are still very particular, so we can't reliably go to a used book store to find things they are willing to try. But each time we go to buy them books, their selections get a little more varied than before.

The latest game is "How many books can I get?". I think they know perfectly well that I'll buy them as many books as they want because I've never told them I wouldn't buy them a book. So in a way it's them exploring their own impulsiveness and desire to consume versus what they consider to be reasonable. I always make them set their own limit. But I'm also fortunate to be a tech worker who doesn't have to even think about budgeting for books. Telling them no has never been a practical consideration here.

theshrike79
0 replies
8h55m

For "linear fiction"[0] I use an e-ink reader exclusively. I also re-read books pretty much never. There are way too many excellent books I haven't read yet, so why would I spend time redoing something I have already experienced? I can easily hi-light stuff on the Kindle and check them out from Goodreads if I need to later.

For books I read for work and other knowledge stuff it's either PDF on an iPad or a web page. In some rare cases a physical book, but stuff tends to move so fast paper reference books expire too fast to have any advantage compared to asking a large language model.

If I get the urge to make any notes from this category, they go into Obsidian.

[0] Books that are read from beginning to end with no need to jump around to check stuff you read before. Could be a biography too, which isn't fiction per se.

stacktraceyo
0 replies
19h24m

I like paper books. I get alot of enjoyment from giving them to friends to read. To me it’s like the difference between when I used to make a mix tape or mix cd and give to someone vs sharing a Spotify playlist.

Also I find that it adds character. Like if someone comes into my house they can see what type of stuff I’m into via my “analog” music movies and books.

sporadicallyjoe
0 replies
16h24m

eBay is hands down the best place to buy books.

They're not new, but that's a feature not a bug. The books are more affordable, you're consuming sustainably, and who really cares if a book has been read before?

ryyr
0 replies
15h57m

why should they? libraries, public domain e-books, great online second-hand book selection ...

rossdavidh
0 replies
18h58m

Almost everything this post describes is not new, not even 21st century new. E-books market share seems to be stuck at about 20% of the total market, where it's been since the early teens. The decline of the print book is more or less like the decline of vinyl albums, except that it never actually declined that much.

However, a lot more people want to be a best-selling author, than there are spots available, so most books don't sell much, and there are lots more authors who cannot get any advance at all. It was ever thus.

richrichie
0 replies
15h24m

The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.

This distribution is pretty common in artistic professions and professional sport. A tiny fraction takes most of the pot.

As they say around here, that's a feature and not a bug. In art, people tend to do stuff not because they are looking to earn an income, but they have something to prove or say or show.

r0s
0 replies
14h0m

Is anyone else alarmed that the top tier is book sales of 75,000 units and up? One post on Substack could get more views than that…..

I guarantee any book-length post on substack will get substantially LESS views than that.

This person discovered what any aspiring writer who cares already knows: Publishing like music runs on proven revenue generating content and gambles on the next big hit. Same as it ever was, and Amazon changes nothing about that fact.

Maybe publishing consolidates and changes, companies boom or bust but the business itself has always been like this.

poulpy123
0 replies
10h18m

I buy books but I don't read them anymore....

peter_d_sherman
0 replies
12h19m

This is by far the best article that I've ever read about the business aspects of the book publishing industry...

p1dda
0 replies
14h20m

Our brains our overloaded with text these days with all the scrolling of news, email, texts and at work which mostly involves even more text.

Reading a great book has great value, I think most people would agree, but to even get to the cognitive state where we could even consider doing this, we have to reduce our enormous load of text that is not work-related. I started doing this a few years back and I got back into reading in my spare time and I will never regret it.

nikolayasdf123
0 replies
8h29m

I do

nemo44x
0 replies
3h47m

Books are, in many cases anyways, an outdated medium. Or at best, a medium that has fierce competition from many other mediums that did not exist for the majority of time the printing press has been around. There's just so many ways to consume fiction today and the barrier to entry is essentially 0. Literature still has its place but that has always been a very small place for the highly intellectual - a limiting factor on its own. Similarly for non-fiction, there's just so much competition from other mediums that frankly, people tend to prefer over books.

People who love reading (I count myself here) will continue to and books will be viable to them. But the vast majority of people only ever read because there wasn't an alternative.

mikl
0 replies
20h11m

Hello, I’m no-one.

kwhitefoot
0 replies
10h22m

Just to refute the title: I've sold a dozen of my textbooks in the last two weeks. I bought them almost fifty years ago for my applied physics degree. So some people are buying some books.

But yes of course no one buys most of the books that are published, I don't suppose that Lorrain and Corson sold more than a few thousand copies of Electromagnetic fields and waves (one of the books I sold) and I doubt that they made enough money to pay for the work it must have cost them.

It must be even worse for academic textbook authors nor that many university courses don't even use textbooks any more because they have switched to modular online instruction.

kilburn
0 replies
13h16m

Incidentally, today is the day of the books and roses [1] in Catalonia.

If you are ever planning on visiting Barcelona I promise you won't regret it if you can arrange it so you are there on Apr 23rd.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_Books_and_Roses

keiferski
0 replies
12h7m

Books are functionally a type of merch (low end) or art object (high end) at this point. The companies that sell the most understand this, whereas those that adhere to the old model of focusing on the words/information inside are struggling.

For example: celebrity books like David Goggins’ sell extremely well at a lower price point. At the other end, Taschen, who makes expensive art books and partners with celebrities often, also does well.

kayodelycaon
0 replies
20h35m

Yeah. I'm a member of the Furry Writer's Guild and in a few anthologies. This is a discussion that comes up occasionally. The sad fact is a lot of people don't read and furry fandom is pretty niche market to start with. Art and music are a lot easier to consume.

It's really easy to get disillusioned and give up.

karaterobot
0 replies
19h6m

Counterpoint: after taking a big hit during the pandemic years of 2020-2022, global book sales are climbing again. Sales are down compared to the years before 2019, but the trend recently has been positive, especially for audio and e-books.

https://wordsrated.com/global-book-sales-statistics/

imetatroll
0 replies
5h50m

I just am old school because I will ALWAYS prefer printed material over digital. I dread the day that physical goods finally vanish.

ilamont
0 replies
19h17m

A big audience means publishing houses don’t have to spend money on marketing

Only blockbuster authors get serious marketing support. For everyone else, big publishers want authors to shoulder marketing and publicity costs and responsibilities. Many lower tier authors are shocked to find they get zero marketing support:

I’d hate for readers to think this happens to every author who signs with a traditional publisher. I have worked with several “Big 5” publishers, and never got even a hint of marketing.

https://janefriedman.com/marketing-support-big-5/#comment-24...

Further, most authors are not experts in publicity or promotion, or have the expertise to run paid marketing campaigns.

This goes a long way to explaining why many books published by the Big 5 sell so poorly.

iamacyborg
0 replies
20h41m

On the flipside, it’s nice that there’s a thriving small and fine press community out there with lots of news press’ appearing over the last few years and some really beautiful books being published.

hyperman1
0 replies
10h34m

I read this and think about Sanglard's book:

https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/

He has 0.77 dollar profit on an 51 dollar book. A minimal campaign with some organisational backing on HN alone should be able to get 1000 books sold, no? Every programmer who lived trough the doom craze is interested. It would place him above the average number of books sold.

hwbunny
0 replies
15h42m

Fucking books are like museums. 100 year disadvantage.

hdivider
0 replies
15h31m

Main value prop of physical books for me: guaranteed zero interruptions from the book itself. Worst case, the pages stick together, or pages are missing, or damaged, or other very infrequent causes of distraction.

All modern digital systems are by comparison, distraction machines. You never know when the next interruption ('notification') gets surfaced, the next update, the next forced restart, the next bug, the next battery problem, the next broken or lost charger cable.

Physical books require light, the book, and your mind. All else fades away, and your mind is given free reign to ponder, to consider, to deliberate. No wonder civilization flourished whenever the physical written form was embraced at sustained scale.

fumeux_fume
0 replies
3h19m

If the title is the conclusion you're reaching after reading all the testimony (or whatever it is) then you're probably the kind of person who never buys books. Other than the heavy hitters and back catalogs, there are too many other books for there not to be a long, sparse tail of sales.

echelon_musk
0 replies
20h43m

Anecdotally I'm buying and reading more books now than at any other point in my life.

Reading gets me away from a computer screen, which I would otherwise stare at from sunrise to sundown.

I tend to be a late adopter. Once things are close to obsolete I usually get involved!

Although books have the disadvantage of being a similar focal distance as a screen and for this reason is still bad for my eyesight!

ddingus
0 replies
11h35m

I buy books of all kinds. Paperback, hard cover, audio (rarely), e-book prefer non DRM. In fact, the number of books I buy has not really changed much. I just end up reading more books!

People trade or loan me books. I get electronic ones via many means too.

Many people I know buy books.

Who does not buy books?

citizen_friend
0 replies
15h20m

I think at least half of the top level comments didn't read the article, and mistook it for an article about reading habits. It's actually about the number of books that sell well, not the number of readers.

chrsw
0 replies
18h32m

I buy books. I might buy more if more publishers offered titles with lay-flat binding. Computer/technical books especially.

cafard
0 replies
7h21m

No one bought books. If one can believe Edward Dahberg, the first run of Thus Spake Zarathusra sold ten copies, the first run of Stendhal's On Love, seventeen copies. That considered, Thoreau selling just more than 200 of the first printing of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers appears as a raging success--but he had many literate friends.

Simon Leys, in the essay "Readers' Rewards and Writers' Rewards", quotes the French writer, and sometime publisher, Jacques Chardonne as saying that "Any good book will find 3,000 readers, no more no less." Leys goes on to say the number hasn't varied significantly in last 400 years. (Collected in The Hall of Uselessness)

bradley13
0 replies
7h13m

Writing is art, just like painting, acting, playing an instrument, etc.. Great hobby. Don't expect to make it a profession. There's a truth behind the phrase "starving artist".

Lottery winners are famous. It's easy to forget that most lottery tickets don't win.

bowsamic
0 replies
11h38m

Here in Germany it seems like people buy a lot of books. Actually people make fun of me for having an ebook reader

beezle
0 replies
2h47m

Interesting article. I have a book still in print, very niche subject. First released in 2013, Amazon mysteriously stoppped stocking it last May, even with recent annual sales of 150-250/yr. Life time print sales are over 1,300 with close to an additional 500 in digital copies.

Hardly a life changer but I've managed to keep the bottom line compensation to $6 per copy, give or take, the entire time so dinner money ;)

anileated
0 replies
15h36m

When you say “no one buys books” in the title, and then proceed to describe how big publishers don’t make a lot of money from books, you are engaging in disingenuous clickbait.

There are small publishers. There are also print shops. You can design and sell a book yourself. I buy physical books. I bought Greg Egan’s self-published books.

There does exist a real threat to the book market, and that’s LLMs, but as of 2024 the market is far from dead.

ahussain
0 replies
5h26m

One advantage of published books is that they have been through an editorial process, and so are guaranteed to be good (on some dimensions).

Once publishing dies, who will set the quality bar? University presses? Stripe press?

YossarianFrPrez
0 replies
12h32m

I love reading books, and I write: I've had essays published in various internet corners, and I'm working on a humble little book of my own. Few who write do so for the money, and like most things, the Pareto Principle applies. That being said, another commenter has pointed out that book sales data suggests we are actually in a book boom.

Also, publishers are absolutely in it for the money. But the quotes and analysis of this article suggest that publishing houses are too big and a victim of their own size. It seems like they can't "run lean" and are big enough that they are trying to find books that can sell millions of copies.

Other questions I had while reading the article: - Is there any Hollywood accounting in the book industry?

- Do writer's advances still make sense? What if advances were smaller but royalties are bigger?

- These companies are looking for books that can sell millions of copies, but they could also a) raise the price, or b) have supplemental products + content for avid readers and fans.

Tr4kt
0 replies
18h18m

I have too many books. I physically can't find more places for more books.

ThinkBeat
0 replies
6h49m

There is a steady stream of tech books being published. Does anyone know what sort of advance a tech author can get, if we leave out the biggest author.

NeilSmith2048
0 replies
16h7m

I love reading paper books, I rarely read e-books for the reason that paper books give me more focus!

Maro
0 replies
11h5m

I buy tons of print books on Amazon, probably around 20-30 per year.

Koshkin
0 replies
19h31m

Since years back I already can’t help but keep thinking of paper books as nothing but printouts of text files. (And I no longer want or need printouts.)

HPsquared
0 replies
2h0m

And most books that are bought, aren't read.

EchoReflection
0 replies
2h38m

I buy used books all the time, sometimes several per month. And I pre-ordered a new book for which I am pretty excited. "Speaking"in universals (the irony of this statement is not lost on me) is unwise.

Deforest7551
0 replies
3h17m

Because of libraries?

AtlasBarfed
0 replies
18h46m

Also: publishers aren't needed anymore

They basically make money scumming celebrity crap on the market and riding the 150 years (and counting) copyright window.

With AI floods the editors and reviewers do become more important. But like music labels, one of the biggest exploiters of art and talent, the technical aspects of media delivery and production aren't held by labels or publishing houses.

They are just middlemen.

Aeolun
0 replies
13h13m

Penguin Random House owns Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar intellectual property. The book has been on Publisher Weekly’s bestseller list every week for 19 years.

This is insane. To be fair, it’s a fun book. But 19 years?!