Are Big Book Publishers Going The Way Of Newspapers?
I think we all possess some kind of familiarity with the history of the newspaper industry over the past century or so. Newspapers and magazines used to rule the kingdom of delivering news, editorials, comics, and even short stories. It was a huge industry that offered the main employment for freelance writers and journalists. Then the internet came along. The internet is easier, faster and cheaper than paying someone to print and deliver a bunch of actual papers each day telling yesterday's news.
Book Publishers Lasted Longer
Unlike newspapers, books have remained a staple in our culture even after the newspaper industry collapsed. The biggest, most obvious reason is the impracticality of reading a whole book--which can take many, many hours--on a big desktop computer screen sitting in your computer chair.
What Changed Now?
Between now and when the internet first took the world by storm in the Dot Com Era something changed. Ereaders.
Ereaders like the Nook and Kindle have not only emerged but gained massive popularity and acceptance as the new way to read books. Some are simple, very different than typical mobile phones or computers, and incredibly inexpensive (like the $79 Kindle
Ebooks are the better, cheaper, and more convenient way both to make and buy books. Reading and storing books from an ereader like a Nook or a Kindle is just the better way to read and store books. (See: 5 Reasons You Should Get A Kindle.)
Can't The Big Publishers Just Sell Ebooks Too?
The big publishers can sell ebooks too. However, they aren't really in the business of selling books. Bookstores are. Big Publishers are in the business of publishing books. Now, anyone can publish a book as an ebook.
Sure one could try self-publishing before the rise of the ereader. Similarly, one could print off some homemade newsletters with articles on them from their home printer before the internet. To really compete with the Big Newspapers and the Big Publishers, however, one would have needed an expensive printing press, an office building, and a huge staff to handle all the non-digital material. Not anymore! Technology has pried open these markets and rendered these old industries' specialties unneeded.
Why Now?
You might ask, "Ereaders like the Nook and Kindle have been around for a little while already, so if they were going to make traditional books obsolete and knock out big book publishers, why hasn't that happened already?"
Keep in mind, the newspaper industry did not crash the second the internet took over. The market maintains a fair amount of inertia. The better product, provided by the internet, at first only slowly chipped away more and more at the newspaper industry. After chipping away more and more, it hit a critical mass and then much more rapidly knocked the old industry off its high outdated horse. After all was said and done, looking back it feels like it happened practically overnight. It took more than one night, though.
Big Publishers are hanging on because at this time a lot of people still go to them to get books, albeit indirectly. If you only buy books from the global bestsellers list, then at this time you will only be buying books from big publishers. That means they still have that key. For now.
In analogy, consider how the newspaper industry managed to hold on for a bit in the early days of the internet because of the credibility people still gave to newspapers over websites. It took some time for the culture to adapt to the internet such that people developed reliable ways to get news from the internet without relying on the newspaper industry. It took a little time for people's prejudicial acceptance of the newspaper's status on outdated grounds to expire.
And so it is with big publishers. But fading.
Right now, the culture is still developing. Before ereaders, one would go to a bookstore and have limited options to choose. Now one can go online and find millions of books that are free or much cheaper than books by Big Publishers. But how is one supposed to browse through that huge selection like one previously would browse through books at the bookstore? It's just like when the internet first came out and a person could be simultaneously awed at the vast amount of websites one could browse, but also taken aback by one's new power to the point of turning off one's computers and picking up a near-obsolete newspaper.
The culture is still developing for ereaders. But it is developing fast. So back to that question: how does one choose between millions of free or extremely cheap ebooks, mostly self-published or published by small publishers? The answer: we see a developing industry in book reviews. Amazon has a great way of showing ratings and reviews from other readers, which many find moderately useful. However, Amazon lacks an effective way of verifying that the few people who review any given indie book are not simply family members or friends of the author. Thus, people are looking for reviews from people they can trust.
However, the people are not looking for one or two industry-selected mouthpieces to tell everyone which books to get. That kind of thinking is old-school, and represents why newspapers failed. Information and product recommendations work differently in the new age. Recommendation systems develop through independent social webs. These communities develop and flourish online. Even with the people that a person knows in real life, most interactions occur online.
People want honest reviews from others they personally interact with at some level. Sure it could be a best friend, or it could be an email pen-pal in another country, or just a Twitter-friend, or some other of countless forms of relationships or communication. I personally have been awed by the success of the reviews by the Review Team at Online Book Club. We started our online community 10 years ago before Kindles and Nooks; And not until many years later was the Online Book Club Review Team born from trusted members of our own online community with a loyal readership of other members of our community eager for the recommendations from a handful of folks they personally know (albeit online).
The cultural, social infrastructure to let personal book recommendations and trusted reviews personally trusted by the reader become the selling point of books, instead of just big publishers having the say, is still developing. But it's coming fast! In the new age, the way books will become popular is going to be very different. Then, big publishers will have nothing left to do but sell their printing presses and close up shop.
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