RicDay on Publishing

Over the past couple of weeks we've seen a flurry of "print is dying" and "publishers are dying" blog posts, newspaper articles, and Twitter flurries. This is a case where I want to shoot the over-excited messengers.

Print is not dying

Print is going through a shake-up. A tough shake-up in the worlds of neswspapers and magazines where advertising revenues have been sliding for a number of years and the web is a more efficient means to deliver "breaking now" news. We all know about that.

Book publishing is in the early stages of a shift from print to digital. Somewhere along the line, books in digital format(s) will cut deeply enough into printed book sales to cause upward pressure on print costs. The equation is pretty simple: print fewer copies of a book and your cost-per-unit rises. For the most part, that is not happening yet.

The market for digital books needs a lot more growth before it truly impacts print books. If the growth of digital doubles in each of the next few years, we are still looking at years of print sales.

I'm old enough to remember when photocopiers were going to kill publishing. We heard that "insight" at cocktail parties, where the chatter was not much different from what we now get in blog comment streams and tweets. Some panicked and there were heated debates about the merits of "blue-ish" paper which might not copy well. I never saw a book printed on that paper, although many claimed it was happening.

I'm also old enough to recall the heated debates about paperback novels killing "real books." My mother's favorite bookstore hid paperbacks in the back. Real books, with covers stiff enough to hurt if one fell on your foot, were the only books "up front" in the windows and on the display tables. Neither books nor print died.

Publishers are not dying

Some publishing houses die off every year. New publishing houses are founded every year. The book publishing ecosystem has been like this for more than a century. Book publishing is like any other business in this regard.

The most excitable commentators seem to believe that the future of publishing is self-publishing. It is true that 75% of the books (I use the term with reservation) published in the U.S. last year were self-published. It is also true (though the commentators seem to miss this little detail) that more than 75% of the books sold in the U.S. last year were produced by publishing companies.

Not much more that I can say about that, except: the job of a publisher is to find great stories, help (via editing) make them greater still, and then bring them to market in a way which will hopefully recoup the publisher's investment and make money for the author.

Agents should be publishers

Hopefully this little bit of silliness is now laid to rest.

Conclusion

We are going through yet another change in the way books are published, sold, and read. The rate of change will no doubt accelerate. I expect books and publsihers will both survive. I am tired of hearing "X is dying" commentary. Let's move on.