One thing that has bound to affect new book sales, especially on the tail, is the increasing ease of buying used books online. It's kind of like the way that eBay altered the music store instrument business.
Pirated e-books probably have chiseled away some of the business.
Having said that, the book business looks to have been in a slow decline for some time. I don't doubt that social media and internet reading generally have made people less able to read long-form work. I'd add that it looks like authors have been falling down a slide of lessening language complexity over the decades.
Pirated ebooks have definitely chiselled away at the business. I haven’t paid for a work of fiction in nearly a decade thanks to ebook-sharing communities. Just 2–3 years ago LibGen was something known only to a niche of torrentfreaks, but it seems like suddenly all of my bookish friends know about it and use it.
(The exception is when I like a classic work of literature enough to want to buy a hardback copy that will last the decades. But that almost always means buying on the used market, because older hardbacks had quality sewn bindings, while hardbacks today are likely to have flimsy glued bindings. So, thanks to publishers skimping on quality, the author gets no remuneration even when a reader of the ebook decides to purchase the physical artifact.)
I agree with everything you've said here. I haven't bought a paperback for years (decades?).
Now that I think of it, practically every book I have any interest in is OOP or there is a nicer version of it available from some time ago.
In terms of ebooks, it'll be interesting to see if we continue to live in an increasing land o' plenty in terms of copyright violation (also including music and video) or if the hammer will come down on that. It's easy to imagine a legion of paratroopers outfitted in Disney uniforms doing a bit of digital axing on servers throughout the world.
One implication might be that this is the time to become a data hoarder.
> Pirated e-books probably have chiseled away some of the business.
Not just that but also licensing.
I live in Europe and it happens a LOT that I can't get a book I want here. Either it's not yet released because it's released in phases. I read English only, however publishers tend to wait to release the English version until the local translation is out, so they don't lose potential sales of the translated version.
Also, some books are simply not sold here for some reason. It happens so often that I go through the Kindle app and then end up with the "This item is not available in your region" message.
At that point I go the easy way. I could get a US prepaid card and use a VPN or whatever but I'm not going to go out of my way to throw money at them. If they don't want to take my money, then they won't get it. I know I'm hurting the authors more than the publishers but I'm just not going to wait for it to become available here.
If you can't get a book legally or conveniently, there isn't really any sales to be "lost" because you wouldn't buy it. There is no real injury if you can't acquire something otherwise. You're not stealing a book from a store to cause a loss.
So, it's either do without or find a way to get it. And then, you might make an extra effort to acquire it if it's really good and encourage others to find it too. Not as a rationalization but as a human habit: pirating some content, within reason, leads to increased sales overall rather than a decrease.
Pirated e-books probably have chiseled away some of the business.
Having said that, the book business looks to have been in a slow decline for some time. I don't doubt that social media and internet reading generally have made people less able to read long-form work. I'd add that it looks like authors have been falling down a slide of lessening language complexity over the decades.
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