A new report in The
Atlantic by Peter
Osnos entitled Ignore the Doomsayers: The Book Industry Is Actually
Adapting Well says
that, “Numbers show that
the publishing industry
is handling the rise of e-readers better than what folk
knowledge might
suggest,” and that, “For all the complexities that publishing
faces, the notion
that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or
information
ecosystem of our time doesn't hold up to the evidence.”
According to Publishers
Weekly in a story titled
A Solid Six Months for
Trade Sales, “Sales of adult and children’s trade titles
rose 13.8% (in the
US) in the first six months of 2012, according to statistics
released last week
by the Association of American Publishers as part of its
StatShot program.
Total industry sales rose 4.4%, to $5.79 billion, at the 1,186
publishers that
report revenue to AAP.”
Back to the first
story, there’s this
interesting bit vis-a-vis Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft,
“Instead of the
competition among traditional booksellers for the attention of
readers that was
for so long the way books were sold, publishers now must
confront the immense
power and reach of tech giants and adapt to their influence.
These companies
are so much larger than even the biggest of publishers that
accommodating their
demands on price and promotion is a formidable task and is the
reason why it
looks (and often feels) that publishers are on the defensive.”
Could this be one of the
reasons for the Penguin-Random House merger? (See story above.)
