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Bookreader cups1/31/2024 Personnel: If e-books are indeed on the rise, and becoming the norm, more digital librarians are needed, or at least librarians who are tech-savvy. Inventory: What genre are people reading and buying i.e., what genre are they likely to borrow? This is important because the overall picture shows different trends than the partial picture the AAP numbers present. Pricing: In the pricing war between publishers and libraries, a more complete picture shows the prices of books actually selling, and can certainly give libraries leverage toward fairer pricing, and even toward moving to an ownership model. 1: 95% of US ebook sales go through only 5 major online retailers Why Should We Care?Ī more complete picture of the e-book market shows several things of import to libraries. The share of the market these books have is growing all the time.įig. A large majority of the books sold on those sites are not reported to the AAP, as they are published through non-traditional (read: small press or indie author) methods. The data offers a much broader picture of the industry.īasically, there are five major retailers of e-books in the United States: Amazon, the largest Apple Books Barnes & Noble (Nook) Kobo US and the now nearly obsolete Google Play Books. In March, in a presentation at Digital Book World (DBW), their data and methods were presented in an eye-opening keynote address. And that is a ton of books.Ī website called Author Earnings, the brainchild of Hugh Howey and his partner, known simply as Data Guy, has been gathering sales data for well over a year now. The information they don’t have comes from sites who do not report e-book sales, and the hundreds of indie publishers, from small press to single authors, who also do not report sales numbers to the AAP. Once ordered, they are immediately in the hands of the reader, or at least at their disposal on their device. It’s just a cheaper option. So the number of physical books is somewhat artificially inflated, as not all of those books make it to the hands of readers. Even if it is returned to the publisher, or a distributor, those books are pulped and recycled rather than shelved in a warehouse for future sales that may never come. Why? Because it costs more to ship it back to the publisher than it does to sell it at a discount, since they only get a partial refund of the cover price. Well, if a book sits on the shelf too long at Barnes & Noble, for instance, it moves first to the bargain table. The sales numbers come straight from the publishers, right? But those sales figures, limited to just the largest publishers, leave out most small presses and indie authors, and they also counts sales of physical books to bookstores rather than those sold to consumers. It’s also much easier to examine that segment of the market rather than looking at a broader picture. This sounds like a pretty impressive big data sample, and it is. The AAP gets its sales figures from the 1,200 largest publishers, and continues to report declining e-book sales. Quarter after quarter, AAP reports that e-book sales are declining, while Amazon and other sites report they are on the rise. In the library world, these decisions are similar to the data based decisions of other businesses as they involve inventory, product development and participation (like Self-E), human resource and hiring, and image management.ĭo we stock more e-books for electronic check out? Do we opt into Overdrive and Self-E? How many digital librarians do we need to have, hire, or train? What is our library to the community? Are we a digital center, with maker labs and other activities, or are we an archive for paper books and nothing more? It is vital when making these decisions that we have all of the facts, not just those presented by certain portions of the publishing industry. Data gathered from online customers has driven the success of Amazon’s first physical bookstore, which I learned a lot about by paying them a visit. The data these decisions are based on is often known as big data, or sets of data too large to be handled effectively by humans or a computer with normal capabilities. Where are the statistics you are using coming from? Does it really matter?ĭata-based decisions are increasingly becoming the norm for website owners, companies, and government agencies. In my role as an author and editor, I have experienced quite the opposite. So what’s really going on here? Is there some kind of deception happening? Could I be wrong? The answer, I think, lies in where you get your information. I recently read an article here on Public Libraries online referencing a report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) talking about the plateau of e-book sales, a sure sign that paper books are making a comeback.
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