Book publishers, Amazon, and maybe even how we read
A lot of e-ink has been spilled documenting the supposed demise of traditional book publishing. It usually precedes lamentations on the dearth of reading in general and the doom that will inevitably spell for Western Civilization. Both arguments quickly collapse under even rudimentary examination. Thankfully, I’m not here to bore you with datasets and economic tables. The video below though, is very much tied to the future of publishing, how we’ll get our books, and even what role Amazon may play in all this.
Many people will continue to read for pleasure in the future – written stories captivate us in a way that is irreducible by other means, and reading, like the creation of music, will continue to be an activity whose allure will be satiated by any with the will to do so. It is also inevitable that e-books will continue their climb in marketshare, and yes, at the expense of print editions. Amazon famously announced that sales of e-books had superceded those of bound editions back in Spring 2011. I hope, however, that publishing houses don’t regard this evolution with the same flailing panic the double –AA’s (RIAA and MPAA) have come to view the digitization of their media.
For those readers, and there will be many, who will still prefer their books to be physical objects that don’t require a battery or smell like plastic and glass, portable printers (or one similiar) in the video will come to occupy a huge piece of publishing and distribution real estate. If you can print any book, on demand, in minutes, stores can operate in a fraction of the space, with far less surplus stock and publishers won’t need to maintain warehouses of unsold inventory. This gives publishers the room to concentrate on marketing and discovery and eliminates the manufacturing and warehousing side of the business. Books can now exist entirely as data, to be downloaded to screens or on-site printers as ordered. Books, and the means they’re consumed, are evolving, not going extinct.
Where does Amazon fit into this? Amazon has distribution centers all over the country and their ultimate goal is same-day delivery for most orders, to every major city. Instead of warehousing and shipping multiple books, they can print any order as it’s placed in any center and ship it in hours with no costs associated to storage and stocking. Enterprising bookstores can follow the same lead. (One near Harvard already does.)
Printed books will continue to hold their place on humanity’s shelves; what is changing, is what form they’ll take in this ever-new world, and how they’ll get into our ever-eager hands.