In a reflection of how technology has affected the business and ideas,
Peter Osnos, founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs, attributed
his invitation to speak not to his 40 years of editing, writing and
creating content but to "a single comment on distribution that made its
way into the industry." It happened this summer, when he announced that
he would step down as publisher of PublicAffairs and was quoted by
Michael Cader in
Publishers Lunch as saying he intended to spend some of his newfound free time examining distribution issues. Piqued by the comment,
Shelf Awareness
interviewed Osnos and wrote a full-length article about his views on
distribution challenges (August 19), an article that Osnos has used
widely to explain his project and that helped lead to the invitation to
speak.
The book distribution model "will be fundamentally different in 10
years," Osnos said and warned that "awareness of change on the horizon
is not the same as effectively moving and preparing for change."
Although "tens of millions of dollars" have been spent trying to figure
out what to do, he continued, "there still seems to be general
confusion" and "the initiative is moving to the online aggregators,"
Amazon and Google.
The industry "needs a distribution system up to date in technology and
offering a range of services for all constituents: authors, agents,
librarians, publishers, booksellers and readers," he stated, adding
that the "decline of serious information is a myth." He pointed to NPR,
which has 30 million listeners each week. It doesn't matter whether
talking about large or small publishers, he said, "we have books people
want to reach."
Martin Manley, president and CEO of Alibris, called the supply chain in
the book business "broken." His reasons: 25% of product is returned;
100% of economic growth is driven by price increases; and titles
continue to proliferate.
His company, he said, recycles books "pretty efficiently." Consumers
turn to used books when they can't get new copies or want the book at
lower prices. He predicted "fights as the value chain gets refigured"
but noted that when developing iTunes, Apple's Steve Jobs was able to
work with music companies to restructure digital content delivery and
come up with "acceptable protections."
Manley predicted that in 10 years there will be no out-of-print books
and used book sales will grow to about 20% of the market from the
current 10%. ("Secondary markets" in any industry, he said, "don't get
much bigger than 20%.") He also predicted that instead of 3,000 new
ISBNs being issued a day, 100,000 new ISBNs will be assigned daily as
everyone becomes "an author and publisher."
Seemingly on the hot seat, Tom Turvey, strategic partner development
manager of Google Print, emphasized that while Google's library program
has caused great controversy--the most recent manifestation of which was the Authors Guild's suit
last week--the Google publisher program has been a "great success."
Concerning the library project, Turvey said "we're interested in
information of all kinds" and acknowledged that "we may have different
ideas of where the line for fair use is drawn." Looked at
"dispassionately," he said, the different viewpoints are "not a big
surprise. It's a disruptive technology with new opportunities to
distribute and redistribute media. The two don't line up initially."
Ultimately, however, "in most cases new technologies have led to more
distribution and greater profit for owners."
J. Kirby Best, president and CEO of Lightning Source, said that by the
end of the year Ingram will be downloading about 100,000 e-books a
month, but "there is no death of print."
Susan Driscoll, CEO of iUniverse, stressed that profitability can come
in small packages, saying that "absolutely there is money to be made
selling less than 1,000 copies of a book a year." In 10 years, she
predicted, "a lot more books will be selling profitably" and "more
publishers will focus on niches."
John Sargent, CEO of Holtzbrinck in the U.S., predicted that the market
will get "more and more efficient" and that general e-books will grow in popularity as students become used to e-textbooks.
Phil Ollila, v-p of Ingram Publishing Services, called the supposed
"attention problem of the consumer an excuse for not knowing the
consumer." He qualified several participants' comments about a broken
distribution system, saying that "the supply chain is broken at the
top. Publishers go where the profit is," and miss alternative markets
such as Web sites that sell two or three copies of a titles or
retailers like Cracker Barrel that sell some books in their mix. The
smart publishers, he continued, go to the museum store show or the
national parks show.
Ollila added that e-books "will grow like so many things--insidiously. When you least expect it, they'll grab you."
Speaking of the consumer, Carol Fitzgerald, co-founder and president of
the Book Report Network, who sells "one-to-one" to readers on seven Web
sites, said she believes that people are reading the same amount as in
the past but they're buying less. Sales are down because consumers are
not making "the extra purchase," she said.
For more coverage of the Book Standard's Summit, go to the Book Standard
Web site.
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