When I read this story by Cyndy Aleo in Bloomberg.com, I laughed out loud. She quotes Marc Parrish of Barnes and Noble who says, " Readers tend toward a favorite author, category, personal recommendations, or flap text." Duh! He didn't know that? And he is a vice president of Barnes and Noble!
Writes Mike Shatzkin for the Idea Logical Company, "In theory, the more books are sold online the more sales should move to the long tail. Online bookstores have the advantage of “unlimited shelf space”. Nothing has to be left out of the assortment because of constraints on capital to stock inventory or room to hold it ... But it doesn’t seem to be working out that way ... it would appear that e-book sales are even more concentrated across a smaller title band than print."
Why did anyone think that e-book consumption patterns would be any different from print books?
I found another story; more interesting reading: Eric Landes writes in The Digital Reader about the Amazon bestseller list, "In the top 20, there are 9 books priced at $1 or less, and 4 priced over $10." This is brilliant! The 'Big 6' publishers who used to dominate these list should, certainly, be worried. Adds Landes, "If they can’t get their books onto bestseller lists, they’re losing both marketing cred and a tool that might generate further sales. Those lists are also very effective free publicity."
Now, that is a changing pattern of consumption. Are e-book downloads moving towards bestsellers, or are they recreating the bestseller list?
In other news in the Irish Times, Mills and Boons is going into e-books.
And in yet another story in the New York Times, Amanda Hocking, the self-published e-book darling has sold her next two books to St. Martin’s Press, part of Macmillan, for more than USD 2 million for the world English rights to “Watersong” a young adult paranormal series.
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