The Way We Are Now

The Association of American Publishers released figures for last June, showing that sales of adult trade paperbacks were down by no less than 63.8%.  (And my latest book was released in trade format!  My joy is unconfined.)

Adult hardcover sales were down by 25.4%, and mass market paperbacks by only 21.6%.

Revenues from ebooks were up by 161% over the previous year, but the increased e-revenues were not enough to make up for the losses caused by print books.

Borders has collapsed, taking with it nearly 50% of the North American retail market for books.  And to make things worse, Barnes & Noble— instead of, say, trying to get itself a piece of Borders’ business—  is reducing the amount of floor space in its stores devoted to books.

Why, you ask?  For one thing, their profit margin is bigger on games and stuffed animals.  For another, they may be getting ready to go toe-to-toe with Amazon in selling lawn furniture:

With these new partnerships, B&N will be offering free shipping on a number of its new product offerings through the holiday season. The partnerships have also led to five new categories at BN.com Marketplace: Home and Gift, Consumer Electronics, Arts and Crafts, Toys and Games and Baby.

Well, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble, good luck with all that, because when I hear “Barnes & Noble,” I totally think Playskool, 1500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and yarn and needle crafts.  I hope you stay in business.  Somehow.

In the meantime, Amazon is marching on.   They’ve become a publisher, and not merely of ebooks.  They’ll shortly have a line of print books, which they’ll be marketing through Amazon and, I guess, Barnes & Noble.

That’s going to be an interesting war.  Because Amazon is well-known for its cutthroat tactics, and of course its business plan, which is to completely corner the book market by driving out (first) the independent bookstores, and then (second) the big chains.   Remember that last year Amazon refused to sell books— any books— by Macmillan on account of a pricing dispute for ebooks?  Just in case you’ve forgotten how ruthless they can be.

Of course publishers have competed with one another for years.  But while Penguin Group competes with Harper Collins, it doesn’t actually plan to destroy Harper.  (For one thing, it can’t, because it doesn’t have sufficient dominance in distribution.)

Amazon plans to destroy its enemies, sack their cities, turn the population into beggars, sow the ground with salt, and groove on the lamentations of their women.  (Which was also the business plan of Barnes & Noble and Borders, except Amazon is nimbler.)

Amazon is known for being long-term greedy.  They will take a loss on a product for years in order to achieve dominance in the marketplace.   They can sell their own hardback books for $4.99 and take a whopping loss on each one, which is more than Penguin Group of Harper or Macmillan can do.  This is exactly what Amazon is doing with its $79 Kindles, taking a loss in order to earn the money back by selling content and by crushing the competition.  Apple can’t afford to match that kind of pricing by selling the iPad at below cost, because they don’t create all their own content.

What may frustrate Amazon’s plan are the customers for books, who are notoriously cranky.  I don’t know a whole lot of people who actually buy books based on price (though maybe Amazon does).  When I buy a book, it’s because I want to read Maureen McHugh or Elmore Leonard or Vladimir Nabokov, not because the book is priced at $2.99.  (I might balk at a really high price, that’s true.  But I’ll make a point of looking or the paperback.)  And while Amazon boasts a number of writers who sell zillions of books for $0.99, I don’t hear anybody praising the quality of the fiction.  None of those $0.99 books are going to change anyone’s life.

I might plump for a new writer if the price is a bargain, but only if I’ve heard good things about that writer anyway.  My reading time is limited, and life is too short to read bad books, even if they are cheap.

When I view all this, I’m inclined to start planning for my retirement— that would be the retirement wherein I live in a cardboard box and dine off cat food.  Because that’s where it’s heading.

And then, just when I’m trying to think how much I can get for my old college textbooks on eBay, I read an essay by someone like Catherynne Valente, who reminds me why I’m in this business.

I didn’t dream of being a writer so I could spend my time discussing file formats and what Author X (even if X= me) did to sell a whole bunch of copies. Maybe it’s stupid and romantic, but I got into this because I loved books. Because stories were the most important things in the world to me, and I had so many of them to tell.

Stupid and romantic, that’s me.  That’s why I’m here.