The Death of Print – And the Verdict is Suicide

For years now the publishing industry has been bleating about how fewer people are reading and buying books or rather the growth In book sales has slowed. This is a claim echoed it seems by the large book sellers, such as Barnes and Noble and others. Whilst the basis for the claim against the booksellers is explained by Amazon’s meteoric rise (see below).

in terms of actual book sales, this is seemingly true, a claim supported by industry statistics, where in the United Kingdom for example, book sales have grown by a mere 19% since 2001

UK Book Sales (£m - net value at invoiced prices)

Whilst in terms of the ‘people are reading less’ claim, what they really mean is that because they (the publishers) are selling less books to the high street retailers, that they are using this as a defence against writers claiming that they are not interested in works by new authors anymore.

If anything, people are reading more. It’s obvious, 15 years ago, people had, books, magazine, and newspapers to read and then came the Internet. Of course, people are reading less of all of these types of media as the Internet has grown. But they have not disappeared by any means and in fact people are now reading all of these types of media plus fitting the Internet into their ever busier lives. Additionally, folk are starting to read ebooks in some cases in preference to actual printed books. Ebook sales are up by a massive 213.5% to July 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008. see http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm

So then the recession then comes along and folk are buying less printed books and the publishing industry, after much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, then in an attempt to make up their sales numbers start pressuring their established stable of writers for them to produce new books. It all starts to look pretty bleak fro them. Finally in desperation the same publishers have started recruiting celebrity writers with books like Sapphire which, If you have actually read the book and heard Katie Price on her reality show, you will wonder why every other printed sentence is not littered with expletives. Probably because it was ghost written as many celebrity novels and autobiographies are. All that matters to the publisher is the bigger the better the celebrity name and a 'wow' title .

Now, finally, the authors themselves are hitting back. As ‘Authors throw book at novels ‘written’ by celebrities’ see The Evening Standard of 2oth Oct 2009, where Best-selling crime novelist P D James added: “What surprises me is that people are prepared to buy them (celebrity written novels) because there's a celebrity on the cover.”

Alarmingly, Katie Price’s novels have sold more than three million copies and, in 2007, her novel Crystal outsold the entire Booker shortlist.

All of this seems to predict a bleak future for the book publishing industry. However, you only have to take a look at the books sales figures and the rise in ebook sales more than 200% growth in one year) to realise that the book sales industry is crowding comfortably.

Problem is, against this background new authors will continue to find it near impossible to get the big publishing house deal so why would they bother?

The future of publishing lies with the discovery of new methods of writing, publishing and promotion. The publisher may have committed suicide, but with the uploading each second of the day with thousands of new pages on the Internet, publishing itself is a growth industry.

With the right approach (and one Which we have to accept will probably not include a large publisher) there has never been a better way to get your message, ideas of story out there.