The future of bookselling? Bookman Beattie ponders this and what it may mean for authors.

This storywas first published in the February/March issue of NZ Author

Photo-Getty Images.

TheEconomist reported recently on the problems of Kodak suggesting it was theGoogle of its day. In 1976 they accounted for 90% of film and 85% of camerasales in America. Then came digital photography to replace film and smartphones to replace cameras. The rest as they say is history.

Is there awarning in here for publishers and booksellers? And what about authors? I amjust back from almost a month in New York. While I was there Amazon announcedthey had sold a million Kindles every week in December. The Nook and Kobo alsoreported huge sales, well above expectation and in all cases more than 40%above sales the previous year. In the UK it was suggested that one in 40 Britswere given an e-reader for Christmas.

In New YorkI was one of many millions each day who used the city’s astonishing subwaysystem to travel about. My informal & unscientific survey taken on 48 subway rides suggestedthat twice as many commuters were reading e-books as opposed to those readingprint books. Admittedly e-books are especially convenient when travelling.Sales figures of print books declined some 10% in the US last year but thatfigure was more than offset by the rise in e-book sales. Most of the growth isin the fiction area.

So forauthors at this stage it would seem that the digital revolution is having apositive impact in terms of sales. It is not yet entirely clear how it isimpacting their incomes although early reports suggest that with higherroyalties on the lower priced e-books the impact may largely be neutral or evenpositive.

I do worrythough about publishers and booksellers, especially booksellers. I believe thebookshop as we know it today will go the way of Koday and the blacksmith and that by 2050there will only be a handful of them left in New Zealand. The most effective ofthose indie booksellers that we know and love should survive if they continueto adapt and provide specialist book information services and advice but chainslike Whitcoulls in New Zealand, Barnes & Noble in the US, and WH Smith inthe UK will have vanished without a trace.

Thechallenge for traditional book publishers will also be one of adaption to newtechnologies. Author self-publishing and upstart newcomer publishers likeAmazon are clearly already having a significant impact and I fear the days ofsome of our venerable older publishing houses are numbered.

For theauthor my advice is if you have an agent make sure he/she is keeping up tospeed on all the digital changes going on and if you don’t have an agent thenmake sure you are keeping yourself well informed. I scour the world mediaeveryday for stories on changes in the book world and provide links to thesestories on my blog. That is a good starting point.