Last month, 69 employees were laid off from Offset Paperback Manufacturers in Dallas, one of the largest employers in the Back Mountain and, according to the company’s website, one of the largest manufacturers of mass-market paperback books in the world.
“While the company has avoided significant losses to its employee count over the past several years, the rapidly evolving publishing market and the continued popularity of e-readers and other devices impacted the company’s output in 2011,” said Andy Meltzer, who works with Matter Communications, the firm hired by Offset to handle public relations, in a January article published by The Times Leader.
Being the insatiable bookworms that we are on the Weekender editorial staff, this unfortunate event got us thinking: Are e-books the future of the book industry?
At first glance, it would certainly seem that way. In 2010, the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group launched BookStats, an industry statistics model designed to track “transformational shifts in how book content is produced and sold in the digital age” by surveying publishers.
According to this study, net unit sales growth for e-books increased 1039.6 percent from 2008-2010 (nope, that’s not a typo), and in 2010, e-book net units were 114 million. Total net unit sales for trade hardcover and softcover books increased nominally. And the article that cited this information noted that although this study doesn’t include “2011’s significant surge in e-book sales, it does shed unprecedented light on the transformational changes underway in publishing formats.”
Another statistic from the BookStats survey seems to support the claims made by the representative of Offset. In 2010, the net unit sales for trade mass-market paperbacks (which are smaller paperback books, like romance novels, that you can find on the racks in airports and grocery stores) were 319 million, a decline of 16.8 percent from 2008.
Liz Keenan, director of publicity at Penguin imprints Plume and Hudson Street Press, informed us that “Penguin doesn’t comment on e-book sales as a matter of company policy,” and Adam Rothberg, senior vice president of corporate communications at Simon & Schuster, referred us to the Association of American Publishers. A request for statistical information from HarperCollins proved to be just as fruitless.
But that was just focusing on the publishers. What about the booksellers?
“Off the top of my head, I don’t know specific numbers, but I can tell you that print books sales are down, and that’s across the industry, and we’re seeing it here also at Barnes & Noble,” said Donna Wench, community relations manager at the Arena Hub Plaza Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre. “And of course, e-book is growing.”
Attempts to contact the press relations department of Amazon, the purveyor of Kindle, the competition for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, were unanswered as of press time.
COMPETITION IS KEY
When Borders went under last year on the back of what seemed to be an ever-growing e-reader industry, people may have questioned whether books, especially print books, had any future to speak of. But the company’s demise may have had more to do with its lack of competitive edge, despite having a partnership with the e-reader company Kobo, than a public desire to read less. “It’s a different world,” Wench explained. “Things are changing. This is it. This is the future of publishing and reading, and we can’t stick our head in the ground and pretend it’s not happening. I strongly believe that’s what happened to Borders.”
With Nook and its newest offering of purchasing e-books through registers at the brick-and-mortar stores, Barnes & Noble is “making the changes that we need to make so that we do stay competitive,” Wench stated.
“Personally, and this is absolutely a personal thing, I’m not representing Barnes & Noble in any way, I think it’s up to this generation to decide the fate of the print book,” she said. “This generation’s completely different than mine, and they do most things totally differently. And this is one of those things … The customer has to demand what they want, and then the industry will give them what they want. So if they’re not interested in print, then it’s not going to be around.”
The issue of staying competitive with a different generation is one that has affected Archbald publisher Tribute Books.
“In 2012, Tribute Books transitioned into being solely an e-book publisher of young adult titles,” said the publisher’s owner Nicole Langan in an e-mail interview. “Over the course of 2011, we watched our e-book sales outpace our print sales by two to one due to the explosion in popularity of e-readers such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad.”
And while focusing on young adult titles, e-books seem to be the natural choice.
“No one age group integrates technology into their daily lifestyles like teenagers,” Langan said. “They are constantly plugged in and connected 24/7 either by smartphone, electronic tablet, laptop, etc. They ‘get’ e-books.”
A PANDORA’S BOX
In doing research for this story, we came across so much statistical information and nuances of this global discussion that it would be impossible to fit it all into the confines of one article. Asking one question leads to another, and before you know it you’ve got a Pandora’s Box of information and queries before you. This may very well be a good thing for the book industry, publishers in particular, because at least it means people are reading.
“Most of us here are book people, and we’re book lovers, and we love not only the content, but the physical book,” Wench shared. “When I read a book, I start at the title, and I look at the cover, and then I read the flap, and I read the title page, and I read the copyright page. Most people don’t do that, but I’m a book person, and I do.
“And I’ll pick up a book and I’ll say, ‘Look at these gilded endpapers, look at these deckled edges. This is a beautiful book.’ You’re never going to pick up your Nook and say, ‘This is a beautiful book.’ That’s apples and oranges.”
There is something to be said, however, for what e-readers are doing for those who are not self-described “book people.”
According to a July 2011 survey by Harris Poll, a public opinion survey conducted by custom market research firm Harris Interactive, overall, 16 percent of Americans read between 11-20 books a year while 20 percent read 21 or more. Among those with an e-reader, 32 percent read the former amount and 27 percent read the latter.
“I can only see this trend increasing in momentum as the price of e-readers continues to lower and more and more people start using this new technology,” Langan stated. “There will always be a market for print books, but I think the majority of book sales will soon be electronic. People want the cheapest, quickest and easiest way to obtain their reading material.”
Though Langan doesn’t see print books disappearing entirely, Wench seemed to sum up the voracity of the issue in a nutshell.
“Even in the last eight years I’ve been involved in the book industry, there have been huge changes, and they’re coming fast and furious now.”
INDIES IN ON THE ACTION
Aside from the big three e-readers — Kindle, Nook and Kobo (which is carrying on without Borders) — there are countless other devices and apps that can be used to read e-books, including the iPad and iBooks. (Remember what we said about this research being a Pandora’s Box?)
Independent booksellers aren’t left behind, either. The American Booksellers Association recently launched the IndieBound Reader, an e-book reading application that uses Google eBooks to allow readers to purchase books directly through independent bookstore websites and then access them on almost any device. w
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