Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Marketing Loft [Public] => Topic started by: Hopscotch on February 02, 2021, 01:52:33 PM
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From Gizmodo 1FEB21:
"E-book revenues are up by 15.2% from 2019, hitting $1 billion last year, according to a report by the Association of American Publishers….'Print book sales tracked for the year by NPD BookScan rose 8.2 percent in 2020 despite—and in some ways because of—the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic'...Total book sales saw a bump as well with adult books rising 35.4% year-over-year…
"The seemingly slow rise of e-books is still surprising given lockdown and the ease of downloading new titles. Total revenues across all categories—from young adult titles to university presses offerings—rose 24.5% compared to November 2019. Total book revenue was $1.2 billion. Ebooks made up 9.3% of total book sales last November…."
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And of course, there is no Amazon data in any of that, and no mention that Amazon data is not included.
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Also may not have counted any ebooks without ISBNs.
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Also may not have counted any ebooks without ISBNs.
Which Amazon has most of them, but yes, there would be a lot more on the other platforms for those people who are wide, and not doing paperbacks.
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It's fine. As long as the trad publishing industry don't believe ebooks are taking a much higher slice of the market than everyone will admit to, they won't put all their focus onto them.
Only Amazon knows the truth, and they aren't telling. I think many indies have a pretty good inkling.
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Its a pity Dataguy isn't still doing his yearly stats.
The 2018 stats for sci-fi were truly eye opening to the real situation.
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Its a pity Dataguy isn't still doing his yearly stats.
The 2018 stats for sci-fi were truly eye opening to the real situation.
I remember it was big news at the time, when Data Guy would publish the results of his Amazon "scraping", but I don't recall the 2018 sci-fi stats in particular. What was it you found eye-opening at the time? Just curious.
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Its a pity Dataguy isn't still doing his yearly stats.
The 2018 stats for sci-fi were truly eye opening to the real situation.
I remember it was big news at the time, when Data Guy would publish the results of his Amazon "scraping", but I don't recall the 2018 sci-fi stats in particular. What was it you found eye-opening at the time? Just curious.
Yeah, I'm curious, too.
Refresh my memory, Tim, please. :icon_think:
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Its a pity Dataguy isn't still doing his yearly stats.
The 2018 stats for sci-fi were truly eye opening to the real situation.
I remember it was big news at the time, when Data Guy would publish the results of his Amazon "scraping", but I don't recall the 2018 sci-fi stats in particular. What was it you found eye-opening at the time? Just curious.
Yeah, I'm curious, too.
Refresh my memory, Tim, please. :icon_think:
He showed the actual BOOM going on in eBooks in general, and Sci-fi in particular, and showed that Trad sales were less than 50% of the total. And that was 2018.
He recorded the entire presentation, and put it out on Youtube, so it might still be around. Might be with the Nubula stuff for that year.
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Its a pity Dataguy isn't still doing his yearly stats.
The 2018 stats for sci-fi were truly eye opening to the real situation.
I remember it was big news at the time, when Data Guy would publish the results of his Amazon "scraping", but I don't recall the 2018 sci-fi stats in particular. What was it you found eye-opening at the time? Just curious.
Yeah, I'm curious, too.
Refresh my memory, Tim, please. :icon_think:
He showed the actual BOOM going on in eBooks in general, and Sci-fi in particular, and showed that Trad sales were less than 50% of the total. And that was 2018.
He recorded the entire presentation, and put it out on Youtube, so it might still be around. Might be with the Nubula stuff for that year.
This might be it:
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That's the one.
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I may be grasping at straws here, but if more people are discovering traditional publishers ebooks, wouldn't that be good for indies too? I'm thinking people who never read an ebook before but decided to during the pandemic might continue to read that format. Once they get on Amazon or Kobo or B&N looking for an ebook, they probably won't even realize for a while that some are trad and some are self published.
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I may be grasping at straws here, but if more people are discovering traditional publishers ebooks, wouldn't that be good for indies too? I'm thinking people who never read an ebook before but decided to during the pandemic might continue to read that format. Once they get on Amazon or Kobo or B&N looking for an ebook, they probably won't even realize for a while that some are trad and some are self published.
They'll certainly notice the huge price difference. Many people believe that you get what you pay for, and therefore an expensive book is better than an inexpensive one. This is one reason I price my women's fiction in the middle, between the lower cost indie books and the higher cost trad books.
I don't think genre prices will ever be an issue of odious comparison; everyone expects genre novels to be inexpensive unless they are very long.
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Valid point.
I'm talking about people who are just exploring ebooks for the first time and may have never heard of something called self publishing.
I got a review on my audio book that they "Couldn't believe this drivel was published. Usually drivel like this is self published." Paraphrasing. Everyone's got to learn to look in the spot where the publisher information is and the Amazon book page is really crowded.
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Anything that makes people look at ebooks should in theory help all ebooks, no matter who publishes them.
But who doesn't do digital? The generation before mine has a lot of people who proudly state they don't own a computer. Their middle-aged child or their grandchild may have given them a computer, but they don't open it. Or they may have a cell phone, but they certainly don't read books on it. Those potential readers are presumably the largest group that prefers paper books. The next largest--or possibly the largest--is the teenagers who prefer paperbacks to digital and who don't have credit cards and can't buy online anyway.
I'm afraid the oldest group will never get into computers or ebooks, even if someone hands them a Kindle. They find the internet hard to comprehend and not worth the bother. The ones not already reading online aren't going to start. They're probably a lost cause. The young ones are an audience to woo. Once they have independence and money, they'll surely buy ebooks because they're doing everything else on their phones already.
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I think the original post shows ebooks got some new customers as people stuck at home discovered them via trade ebooks. How many more newbies are there going to be from here on out? No one can say. I think old people became less resistant to technology over the past year, for some it was the only way to get interaction with anyone.
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As a reader i didnt know what indie and trade pub was until i started writing.
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Everyone's got to learn to look in the spot where the publisher information is and the Amazon book page is really crowded.
Why? What does it matter whether a book was published by a traditional publisher or an indie? Either you enjoyed a book or you didn't.
The generation before mine has a lot of people who proudly state they don't own a computer.
And probably now is the worst time to try to get them to use a computer. If they thought computers were intimidating or difficult to use before, then they definitely would not want a modern Internet-connected computer. The difference between my 14-year-old computer and a new-ish computer are pretty stark. Old computer: you boot it up and it's pretty much ready for business. New computer: you boot it up and half a dozen applications are wanting you to update something and another half a dozen are telling you everything's up to date. In either case, you have to close a bunch of windows and notifications before you can actually do anything.
I think old people became less resistant to technology over the past year, for some it was the only way to get interaction with anyone.
Didn't work for my mother. She has computer which she uses for eMail and to occasionally check the web, usually to look for coupons or discounts. And then she uses her phone for talking and texting. But she will never read a book on either. Even if the eBook is significantly cheaper.
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I'm not sure about reading ebooks but around here the government has given quite a lot of funding to community groups for digital inclusion, and much of it has gone towards older people who have found themselves stuck at home for longer than usual. But I think the focus of it has been on getting them to use phones and tablets to keep in touch with others in the same boat, via specific apps such as Zoom and WhatsApp.
(I'm actually at the younger end of this age-group myself but I've been working with computers since 1970 so have more or less kept up with digital developments, ebooks etc).
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Everyone's got to learn to look in the spot where the publisher information is and the Amazon book page is really crowded.
Why? What does it matter whether a book was published by a traditional publisher or an indie? Either you enjoyed a book or you didn't.
That was the point I was trying to make. If someone found ebooks through a trade ebook, because paperbooks weren't available/accessible because of the pandemic, they wouldn't know if it was trade or self published because there's too much info on the Amazon book page for it to stand out if you aren't aware of it and are looking for it.
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I know of some readers who do not use ebooks. They only read paperbacks. They're very active in Facebook readers' groups, but they don't do digital.
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I know of some readers who do not use ebooks. They only read paperbacks. They're very active in Facebook readers' groups, but they don't do digital.
I've actually been hearing a lot of that in sweet books. They prefer paperback.
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I know of some readers who do not use ebooks. They only read paperbacks. They're very active in Facebook readers' groups, but they don't do digital.
Is Predicted eReader Decline Indicating Reverse Digitization? from Good E-Reader
"It wasn’t long ago that eReaders were foretold as being the doom of the book publishing industry....it was expected that millennials would adopt the page-less way of reading en masse, but instead, it appears as though it was the boomers carrying eBooks to their 20 percent share of sales. Now, as we pass another decade, eReader market revenue worldwide will decline, according to reports, from $4.6 billion in 2018 and 2020 down to $2 billion in 2024. With millennials and Gen-Z seemingly reverting back to print books, is the decline of eReaders a harbinger of a kind of reverse digitization?"
:icon_question:
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I think it's more likely that a large percentage of millennials just plain don't read books e or paper.
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A large percentage of everybody doesn't read books. That does not make them ignoramuses. They simply don't read books, regardless of format.
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Um, I didn't say that it did.
It's sad to me that my own kids never became big readers. I thought I had the younger one when she plowed through the Warrior series but she lost interest again as soon as she was finished. Outside of them I don't care what people do for entertainment.
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"It wasn’t long ago that eReaders were foretold as being the doom of the book publishing industry....it was expected that millennials would adopt the page-less way of reading en masse, but instead, it appears as though it was the boomers carrying eBooks to their 20 percent share of sales. Now, as we pass another decade, eReader market revenue worldwide will decline, according to reports, from $4.6 billion in 2018 and 2020 down to $2 billion in 2024. With millennials and Gen-Z seemingly reverting back to print books, is the decline of eReaders a harbinger of a kind of reverse digitization?"
eReaders gave way to smartphones.
Phones have gotten larger again, the screens better, and so many people find they don't need an eReader anymore because their phone is just fine. That and they do everything on their phones.
If they make the argument based on devices, they're going to come to erroneous conclusions.
eReaders were a necessary invention to fuel the move to digital. They were never going to be the standard by which the move was judged into the medium to long term, since how you read will continue to evolve.
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E-readers aren't that necessary now that phones are so easy to read on. :) Honestly, today's phones are a boon to readers. Love mine. I haven't picked up my Kindle in nearly a year. Have I been reading fewer (e)books? Far from it.
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I will only read ebooks on my kindle or my kobo reader. It's e-ink or paper for me, and never backlit LCD screens. The difference between e-ink and a mobile phone screen is huge.
I'm just trying to take care of my eyes, given I spend 80-90% of my waking hours looking at backlit LCD screens.
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I will only read ebooks on my kindle or my kobo reader. It's e-ink or paper for me, and never backlit LCD screens. The difference between e-ink and a mobile phone screen is huge.
I'm just trying to take care of my eyes, given I spend 80-90% of my waking hours looking at backlit LCD screens.
Same. I own a Kindle Voyage and have zero interest in reading on my phone.
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But a tremendous percentage of people do access media, including books, on their phone. And as phones improve (the screens even fold now) that percentage will continue to increase. I assume it's only a matter of time until the texture (or appearance of texture) of the screen can be changed from super-cinema HD to easy to read in direct light paper-like something - assuming there's a market for it. Younger generations have a very different relationship with tech.
Paper books are fast becoming a nostalgic niche. Do they even have paper textbooks anymore? I assume dedicated e-readers will follow suit soon enough.
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What we don't know yet is what eye problems people who have spent most of their lives staring into LCD/LED screens will have when they begin entering their mid-forties and onward. They may end up needing smartphones or digital readers too large to fit in a pocket even folded.
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No my 10th grader doesn't have textbooks this year. They got issued books for English for reading, I think that's it. I'm not sure what they are going to do going forward. We had to return last year's books in the beginning of August last year so they could sit on tables in the gym for two weeks before anyone touched them so any germs on them could die. BTW - even if they are only e textbooks at the college level some of them still cost $200.
Isn't the ereader device market is a less reliable indication of ebook sales than the actual ebook sales? I hope you get more than a year out of a device like that.
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What we don't know yet is what eye problems people who have spent most of their lives staring into LCD/LED screens will have when they begin entering their mid-forties and onward. They may end up needing smartphones or digital readers too large to fit in a pocket even folded.
Or this...
(https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/445420/smart-contact-lens-samsung-patent-camera.webp?w=737&f=1a74849dd6d0b6ce6b3ce96559384900)
Article: https://www.newsweek.com/samsungs-smart-contact-lenses-let-you-blink-take-photo-445425 (https://www.newsweek.com/samsungs-smart-contact-lenses-let-you-blink-take-photo-445425)
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What we don't know yet is what eye problems people who have spent most of their lives staring into LCD/LED screens will have when they begin entering their mid-forties and onward. They may end up needing smartphones or digital readers too large to fit in a pocket even folded.
Or this...
(https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/445420/smart-contact-lens-samsung-patent-camera.webp?w=737&f=1a74849dd6d0b6ce6b3ce96559384900)
Article: https://www.newsweek.com/samsungs-smart-contact-lenses-let-you-blink-take-photo-445425 (https://www.newsweek.com/samsungs-smart-contact-lenses-let-you-blink-take-photo-445425)
Yeah, a display that's actually on your eye, projecting images directly into it, what could go wrong? :eek:
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I assume it's only a matter of time until the texture (or appearance of texture) of the screen can be changed from super-cinema HD to easy to read in direct light paper-like something - assuming there's a market for it. Younger generations have a very different relationship with tech.
You can't change the laws of physics.
Not to get pedantic, but I'm going to anyway.
LCD/LED (phone/tv/computer screen) works like a slide projector. There's an extremely bright light, and you hold a semi-transparent image in front of it. The bits the light shines through are the bits you see.
E-Ink works by 'surfacing' microscopic black/grey particles in a white/pale grey medium. The only thing you can see is the bit light bounces OFF of - mostly the page, rather than the writing. In effect, there's almost no difference between this tech and spraying or fusing black dots onto a sheet of paper - aka printing.
That's why I will only read books using E-ink, as it's equivalent to reading a printed page. I find it soothing, especially as I do most of my reading in bed before I go to sleep.
Now, people who consume all their media on their phones probably don't care if they also read books on them. It's unlikely they're going to carry around a kindle AND a large phone, that's for sure. I would guess that people reading books on phones outnumber those reading them on dedicated e-ink devices by a factor of 100,000 to 1, to be honest, given the number of phones out there.
I'm just pointing out that you can't display a book on a phone the same way you can on a kindle, and if you're trying to convert a 'paper only' reader then possibly the worst thing you can do is show them a book on a bright, glaring phone screen, rather than a page on an e-ink device.
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Yeah, a display that's actually on your eye, projecting images directly into it, what could go wrong? :eek:
I'll bet some half-crazed SF author has probably already written a book about implants that go inside the hero's eyeballs and attach directly to the optic nerves. :ices_angel_g:
You can't change the laws of physics.
On that note, I would add that I'm skeptical of "folding screen" stuff. Material fatigue is a thing, and I'd like to know how many times these screens can be folded and unfolded before they start to wear out. They don't even have to actually break to be rendered unsatisfactory; they only have to have enough broken pixels (or whatever) to give the user a negative viewing experience.
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Yeah, a display that's actually on your eye, projecting images directly into it, what could go wrong? :eek:
I'll bet some half-crazed SF author has probably already written a book about implants that go inside the hero's eyeballs and attach directly to the optic nerves. :ices_angel_g:
I'm a bit more advanced than that. In head PC, which pops up a hollo screen only that person can see. Full eye movement controls, as well as hand controls.
It's actually an old concept now. The first usage I know about was back in the late 90's.
It also includes the HUD format over the visual field, as used in the original Terminator, but for people, not robots. So also an old concept now.
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You can't change the laws of physics...
So, I take it you're still in the 'ill humors' and leeching camp? grint
Seriously, we have no idea what's possible. It turns out that Physics is surprisingly flexible. Aristotle had it all figured out, and then Newton, and now we think Einstein's got it together - except for all of that pesky stuff that doesn't make any rational sense, like Quantum Mechanics, Dark Matter and Vogon poetry. There's no reason to believe that we won't be able to change the properties of materials in the near future, including reading screens.
Yeah, a display that's actually on your eye, projecting images directly into it, what could go wrong? :eek:
I'll bet some half-crazed SF author has probably already written a book about implants that go inside the hero's eyeballs and attach directly to the optic nerves. :ices_angel_g:
From wiki...
The Nyctalope is a pulp science fiction hero created by French writer Jean de La Hire in 1911 - he's got enhanced cyborg eyes.
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On that note, I would add that I'm skeptical of "folding screen" stuff. Material fatigue is a thing, and I'd like to know how many times these screens can be folded and unfolded before they start to wear out. They don't even have to actually break to be rendered unsatisfactory; they only have to have enough broken pixels (or whatever) to give the user a negative viewing experience.
They probably plan on it lasting an average of two years. Built-in obsolescence so you buy a new one at least every two years.
Yeah, a display that's actually on your eye, projecting images directly into it, what could go wrong? :eek:
I'll bet some half-crazed SF author has probably already written a book about implants that go inside the hero's eyeballs and attach directly to the optic nerves. :ices_angel_g:
I'm a bit more advanced than that. In head PC, which pops up a hollo screen only that person can see. Full eye movement controls, as well as hand controls.
I've got technology like that too. Video and audio. Also nanobots in your body that maintain things past their natural expiry or manage health conditions, etc.
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SF is great...our technology tends to evolve at the speed of plot holes.
:tup3b
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...our technology tends to evolve at the speed of plot holes.
Oops, I misread that as tech evolving at the speed of pot holes, which is even faster.
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It also includes the HUD format over the visual field, as used in the original Terminator, but for people, not robots. So also an old concept now.
Yeah, that's what I did. It was initially awkward for the character. :hehe
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They probably plan on it lasting an average of two years. Built-in obsolescence so you buy a new one at least every two years.
That sounds optimistic for something you're folding and unfolding multiple times a day.
For people who actually use these things on a regular basis, I predict six months, tops, before the display develops enough defects to become too annoying for the user to ignore.
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They probably plan on it lasting an average of two years. Built-in obsolescence so you buy a new one at least every two years.
That sounds optimistic for something you're folding and unfolding multiple times a day.
For people who actually use these things on a regular basis, I predict six months, tops, before the display develops enough defects to become too annoying for the user to ignore.
They just need to make the ones like they had in Earth: Final Conflict. A scrolling pull-out display. Of course, those were made by MCIWorldCom which doesn't exist in our future.
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Don't get me wrong - I'm all for discussing technological change and the expansion of scientific knowledge. I've been writing scifi for almost 30 years now.
But there's a huge difference between asserting that electric vehicles will replace petrol/gas powered vehicles at an ever-increasing rate, and stating that petrol-powered vehicles will soon be pumping twice as much gasoline out of their tailpipes as they consume.
One is an advance. The other is a physical and scientific impossibility.