Print publishing's digital challenge
- By Zhang Junmian
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E-mail China.org.cn, May 16, 2013
"In the future, print books will continue, but e-books will inevitably grow and dominate some publishing sectors," New York based author and correspondent of "The Bookseller" Gayle Feldman told China.org.cn in an exclusive interview on May 8. Feldman was commenting on the idea that in the long run, traditional publishing will be usurped by its digital rival.
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Gayle Feldman, New York based author and correspondent of "The Bookseller", receives an exclusive interview with China.org.cn on May 8, 2013. [China.org.cn] |
Feldman, who has worked in publishing for more than 30 years, believes that the traditional publishing sector will continue in spite of an increasingly digitized world. She believes, however, that the traditional sector should adapt and reinvent itself in order to meet the challenges from both domestic and global markets.
In recent years, the conventional publishing sector has been squeezed by internet use in general as well as tech giants like Google, Apple, and particularly the online retailer Amazon. E-books, now a multi-billion dollar category for the company, surged nearly 70 percent in 2012, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, said in late January 2013. In addition, recent news reports have stated that Microsoft is offering US$1 billion to buy Nook Media's digital assets.
The rise of digital reading and online book stores has also led to the closure of many high street book stores. Borders, the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain, went bankrupt in 2011, while in China, it's reported that more than 10,000 private brick-and-mortar bookstores were closed between 2008 and 2011.
As well as this, the change-ravaged book business has been gripped by the dual trends of consolidation and dispersion. Consolidation has resulted in a smaller number of large publishers due to mergers and acquisitions -- and the number is set to fall further -- while dispersion has led to an increasing number of both smaller publishers and self-published authors, according to Feldman.
"Statistics show that about 23 percent of all trade book sales in the United States in 2012 were e-books," said Feldman. "And [this is] fast growth, given that people [only] began to read e-books in 2009."
This growth rate has, however, been in decline since the end of 2012, a trend which Feldman attributes to three main reasons: Some readers have been drawn back to print; some initially filled their new e-reading devices with lots of downloads, but then their rate of new downloads slowed; and some now have bought other new devices, such as the Apple iPad, but these are replacing older devices, and so do not benefit from that same surge in initial buying.
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