EBooks
Growth in EBook and Digital
According the Washington Post The question was always "at what share of the book market will e-books settle," not "when will print books cease to exist." Old technologies never die, they just fade into a smaller, niche offering; television supplanted radio as the dominant mass medium in the middle of the last century, for example, but radio is still a big business. Researchers have been discovering that e-books are well suited for some types of books or people but not as well suited for others, such as nonfiction and literacy fiction. "The e-book may turn out to be more a complement to the printed book, as audiobooks have long been, rather than an outright substitute "There is an overabundance of entertainment and we are constantly deciding how to spend our time. If you read every day an e-book is probably the route you will take but are you going to invest 100 or more dollars for a nook, kindle or ipad for a few books a year?
Subscriptions
... Netflix for books
"Scribd is your card to an online library with no due dates or late fees."
As books are moving digital, there is a demand for easy access, and variety to be offered at a reasonable price. The company Scribd, is a one of a kind business that is predicted to revolutionize the EBook industry. A new standard will be made by their offering of access to EBooks through a monthly subscription fee of only $8.99. With 80 Million monthly readers, and use in 100+ countries, Scribd offers authors and publishers exposure to avid readers around the globe.
New Model, Traditional Revenue.
While subscribers can enjoy an unlimited number of the 40 Million titles and documents for a flat monthly fee, Scribed pays the publishers whenever a book is read, as if the book were purchased in a retail EBook store. Authors are then paid by their publishers as agreed in their contract.
A new digital world for readers.
Once a Scribd member, (the first month is free) create a customized profile and recommendations will be generated by the preference settings. Enjoy Millions of books across all genres on almost any device: I-pad, Android, Kindle Fire, Nook, and any device that has a web browser. While subscribers can enjoy and manage their library online, titles are also available to download for off line reading to enjoy anywhere and anytime. An automatic syncing feature between devices enables readers to pick up exactly where they left off without the hassle of marking their page. Readers may also find select titles marked "purchase only" that are available for a reduced price through Scribd. These additional costs are set to comply with all publishers requirements, and copyright laws to ensure that the authors get paid. With titles ranging from those found on the New York Times best seller list, to the great literary classics, to self published documents, there is something for every reader of every age. Gift cards are also available!
Interested?
Follow the link attached to the Scribd logo above.
Store Closings
The book industry is changing but far from going instinct. They are arguably more profitable off of ebooks (due to the lower production costs, warehousing, shipping to thousands of commercial stores, outlets, and colleges) and there is still a need/want for books for several reasons.
Lawsuits
US Department of Justice V. Apple Inc.
Lawsuit about monopolylizing e-books
When Apple joined the e-books they decided to make a deal with 5 major book publishers. Apple would only be their agent. And, the publisher would set the retail price. It was seen as price fixing the market. Amazon took books down to 4.99 and lower, when you purchased it as an e-book. Hardcover books were around 29.99 and higher. Once, Apple made this deal with 5 of the big hitters in the publishing industry the prices started to climb.
GOOGLE V AUTHORS GUILD
(late 2005-November 2013)
The Authors Guild is a non-profit organization for published authors. In September 2005, the Authors Guild sued Google for scanning and copying books into their collections. The Authors Guild did not like this because (to them) it violated copyright law; however, Google said it was to digitalized books so everyone has access to them globally. Google scanned more than 20 million books. Authors Guild asked for $750 for every book that was scanned without authorization. They were also claiming statutory damages of $750 for each book Google has copied, distributed or displayed in violation of copyright law. Google has estimated that they could owe more than $3 billion if Authors Guild succeeds. The judge in U.S Supreme Court, however, ruled with Google and dismissed the lawsuit. He said it was legal and he thought of it as an awesome idea. He believed that the massive library will make it easier for students, teachers, researchers, and the public to find books, while maintaining "respectful consideration" for authors' rights. He also said that digitization was informative and could be expected to boost rather than reduce book sales.
Publishing Houses Business Model
With the addition of self publishing, it has completely changed how people go about writing books. For many years any aspiring author would have no option but to go to big publishing corporations like Penguin publishing or some others, but now authors can simply just go to amazon or some other site and publish it it minutes. It has completely changed the industry because now authors are self publishing there books and using websites like amazon as exposure. The hope is that they will get discovered as there ebook gets more popular. With self publishing it is giving the author more control then they have ever had. It is having a very negative impact on the publishing industry. But self publishing is not the only thing hurting large publishing companies.The eBook its self is taking huge toll on the corporations because the need for physical books is disappearing. With complications in the rights of there books there is a serious drop in the profits.In 2012, there has been a program added by Penguin Group to self publish through a company they bought out in Authors Solutions, but it is not free like Amazon and others.
The Publishing companies at the top of the industry seem to be hanging in right where they are. A lot of the big publishing companies have stems to other things like movie production, trading ect. that could be keeping them there. 3 of the "BIG 6" publishing companies have links to other forms of media.
Penguin-Random House Merger
Two of the biggest publishers in the world merged very recently in 2013. The merge resulted in a 47% ownership through Penguin and 53% through Random House. With Penguin's parent company being Pearson and Random Houses being Bertelsmann, this is one of the biggest stories of the powerhouses in Book publishing coming together. A 2013 list by publishers weekly, it had Pearson sitting at number 1 and Random House sitting at number 5 respectively of the largest publishing companies in the world.
Libraries
The Bookless Library
I.E. 50 computer stations, 150 e-readers, 25 laptops, and 25 tablets and NO books in paper form.
" Bookless libraries are often considered a potential model for future libraries, with modernization, increased availability of space and lower costs cited as potential benefits. However, bookless libraries face many challenges, including the public's strong attachment to print media in libraries. In 2002 the Santa Rosa Branch Library offered a digital-only library to
patrons, only to bring books back into the library after a surge in public demand.[2] Problems with access and copyright also limit the utility of bookless libraries, since a majority of digital content is still not available for borrowing online and much more has never been digitized.[2] Library patrons are also resistant to the idea. In a 2013 Pew survey, only 20% of Americans said libraries should "definitely move some print books and stacks out of public locations to free up more space for things such as tech centers, reading rooms, meetings rooms, and cultural events."[3"
How the book industry is holding up
There has been a massive surge in terms of e-book sales. Barnes and Nobles and already Borders are slowly shifting to being out of business, in light of the competition of Amazon and other popular online e-book services. This goes for Nooks, Kindles, and other e-book reading devices. The printing press industry is just barely hanging in there and it will soon find its exit out of competition. Interesting article that I came across depicting how parents and workers feel about the rapid change of the book industry. The title of this article is called: Change is the only constant in today's publishing world (NPR). The publishing industry has been in flux for years. First chain stores, then Amazon, then e-books — many forces have combined to create dramatic change in the traditional publishing model.
Mike Shatzkin is the founder and CEO of the publishing industry consulting firm Idea Logical. He says one of the biggest changes happening in publishing right now is the planned merger of two of the biggest players in the field, Penguin and Random House — with whispers of further mergers to come.
Already, there's a lot of debate about what that kind of consolidation will mean for the industry. Shatzkin tells NPR's Audie Cornish that the size of the merged company will give it the clout — and the backlist — to create book sales anywhere it wants to. Even the corner drugstore might have a real bookstore — filled, of course, exclusively with Penguin and Random House titles, not just a rack of pulp paperbacks.
"Another way they might create additional distribution is through a subscription, e-book subscription service," he says. "Before Random and Penguin merged, no single publisher would have had enough of the most commercial titles to make something like that work. They might. So they may be able to create distribution channels that are extra, compared to what we have now, and proprietary, in that other publishers won't be able to get at them."
Digital platforms are another big trend right now — websites where authors can publish their work and connect with their readers. Shatzkin says children's publishers have been making good use of platforms. "For example, Scholastic, which has fabulous reach into schools, through teachers, is creating an e-book reading platform called Storia," he says.
Storia will be a complete environment, providing services for the purchase and reading of e-books and tools for parents and teachers to oversee their kids' reading. "So if a parent or teacher get a kid reading on Storia, you're not going to be able to get a book to that kid except through Storia. And Storia's not the only platform of its kind ... and what that means is that power transfers to the platform owner from the individual title or author."
But what about the readers who don't want to sign up with a platform to get their favorite authors? "I think we've already had that experience," Shatzkin says. "Twenty years ago, much more than today, there were people that chose their books from what Book-of-the-Month Club offered them. And Book-of-the-Month Club did not offer them books that were Literary Guild main selections, because they didn't have rights to them. And in fact, in a more subtle way, people shop from what's inside a bookstore. What's inside a bookstore is a small percentage of the total number of books available."
Past Present Future
Citations
Thvg. "Apple Classic Icon." - Apple Logo Icons. Soft Icons, 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
"Google Win Expands Fair Use." PublishersWeekly.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014
scribd.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 April. 2014
Staff, NPR. "Change Is The Only Constant In Today's Publishing Industry." Npr.org. NPR, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014
"The Word's 60 Largest Book Publishers, 2013." PublishersWeekly.com. N.p., n.d. Web 25 Mar. 2014
Bosman, Julie. "Penguin and Random House Merge, Saying Change Will Come Slowly." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Julie 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
"Two Become One." Flavoriwre.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014
"Bookless Library." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
Olmstead, Gracy. "The “Bookless” Library." The American Conservative. State of the Union, 27 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2014
Irwin, Neil. "E-books Sales Are Leveling Off. Here's Why?" Washington Post. N.p., 8 Apr. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
"Google Books Win Case against Authors over Putting Works Online." Theguardian.com. Guardian news and media, 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2014
Blount, Roy Jr. "The Authors Guild." The Authors Guild . N.p., 8 Oct. 2008. Web. 03 Feb. 2014
Johnson, Daniel. "Google wins digital Books lawsuits." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 15 Nov.. 2015. Web. 03 Feb. 2014
Comments (3)
Tejas said
at 3:20 pm on Feb 2, 2014
Can you let me know when you are done editing this page? I need to put some links on the page.
-Tejas
shawn kuehl said
at 8:26 pm on Feb 2, 2014
Guys color me confused, I'm assuming each individual industry needs its own "past present future" sections and i dont know who made the mistake but book industries present link is going here and there is a link for "film present link" on this page....
allyxiong said
at 9:30 pm on Apr 1, 2014
I fixed past, semi on future, but this one I will come back to and fix it.
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