Publishing Changes

My wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is doing a series called The Business Rusch on her site, and this week she stopped talking for a week about writers in publishing and talked about the massive changes that have just happened in publishing. One change is that Borders Bookstore is failing fast. The second change is that the holiday sales of e-readers and ebooks exploded, far more than anyone expected.

So for a clear take on these changes, go read her article about it. The Business Rusch.

Discussion here if you would like. It sure is interesting stuff going on.

This entry was posted in Recommended Reading and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Publishing Changes

  1. Andrew Cooper says:

    Hi Dean, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all these articles. They’re very helpful and interesting!

  2. Camille says:

    I think one of the things people don’t realize about evolution is that it doesn’t actually happen that gradually. Millenia of slow accumulation of little things that make change possible, but then BOOM – the actual change happens fast.

    But we must remember that there actually are still buggy whip makers in the world.

    I’ve noticed a growth in independent bookstores lately around here. Although I think it’s a long way before they can fill the shoes of the two Boarders affiliated stores. (We can hope that maybe those can go more indpendent, though.)

    The question is what will happen to the public’s habits during the transition? If we have to go too long without good (or at least convenient) bookstores… we may get out of the habit of using brick and mortar bookstores.

    Camille

  3. John Walters says:

    It’s strange to see things from far across the ocean, living in Greece as I do. Here there are no physical bookstores to which I can go that have any decent selection of English books, so for years I have depended on buying books online. I love wandering through bookstores and do so whenever I make a trip to the States, but if I can’t, books are still available – I just have to plan ahead. Readers who must have books will adapt to whatever changes happen. And though electronic book sales will continue to grow, there will always be readers (like me) who want physical books to hold and will find a way to get them.

    One interesting thing about electronic sales, though. I considered having my son bring a Kindle over from the States for Christmas until I checked into the details. Here in Greece I have access to less than two thirds of the inventory available in the States. In addition, local taxes raise the prices of the e-books through the roof. For example, my short stories, which are priced at .99 each on Kindle, cost 3.44 (in US dollars) here in Greece because of the added on taxes. For international distribution I would say there are still some kinks in the distribution network. It put me off getting an electronic reading device, at least for the present.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>