The UK's favourite print show - MacMate

BOOKS
The CASE for books
As with many printed products, books are not at risk of dying out but
their manufacture, distribution and are changing. Examining these
changes not only will bring answers, but commercial success.
Publishers and bookshops are in trouble. Books are not.
Printers have adapted to digital printing and print on
demand. Some have closed, but many have invested
in order to survive. Others have come into the market.
But the world of book publishing is in turmoil thanks
to the impact of digital, the internet and the ebook reader.
Channels for distributing and buying books are being shaken,
consolidated and broken apart as the framework which has
served the industry for several hundred years is coming apart.
At the London Book Fair, consultant David Kohn told a
seminar that the UK’s leading bookshop chain Waterstones was
effectively surviving on a 1% margin. “Inevitably there will be
fewer book stores in future and fewer books on display,” he said.
There were still too many large warehouses holding books in this
country. “There is a high fixed cost to any central warehouse and
the trade has to cut this cost or make better use of the asset. There
are too many warehouses, so they will have to consolidate or
partner.”
IN THE OLD WORLD, AUTHORS have needed publishers,
spawning a need for agents, for internal systems to manage a
book on its year-long journey from submission to shop.
Publishers have needed bookshops to distribute books to the
buying public. Along the way publishers have fostered
relationships with some book printers to ensure that books can
be manufactured close to the point of demand, although in many
cases publishers have tended to buy as keenly as possible, and
in many cases from overseas printers.
The weaker pound and higher costs of transportation are
reducing the attractiveness of printing outside the UK for
shipping back, while printers putting together partnership
arrangements with printers on different continents are promoting
the shift to a distribute and print way of working.
The status quo that has existed for many years is now being
16 May 2011 www.printbusinessmagazine.co.uk
shaken up as never before. The blockbuster titles remain. The
Stig Larsson Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series has, for example,
sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. But the third title
in the series has notched more than 1 million sales in the Kindle
format in the US alone.
The arrival of ebooks like the Kindle is causing huge concern
for publishers, partly because there is huge uncertainty about
how to price books for digital reading. Amazon says it is selling
millions of Kindles and that sales of paperback titles in electronic
format are outweighing sales in printed form. But this includes
heavily discounted titles and some free of charge books.
AMAZON FURTHER ENCOURAGES UNAFFILIATED authors
to publish purely for the electronic device. One, John Locke, is a
former marketing executive who realised that by selling at 99
cents he would still receive 35 cents of each sale. He is hugely
successful. Fellow e-author Amanda Hocking has been the
subject of a bidding war among traditional publishers on the back
of the success of her books on the Kindle. Neither had needed
traditional publishers to achieve this success.
Other high profile authors are also beginning to question the
need for publishers, having achieved ‘brand’ status and the
ability to set up marketing deals and tie ins without the structure
of a publishing business including being able to sell via web sites.
This is the biggest threat to the traditional publishing
structure. Amazon sells vast quantities of books and the shift to
online sales has already led to the bankruptcy of Borders in the
US and is putting Waterstones at risk here. The chain has 297
stores, of which pundits reckon that as many as 200 might go.
“Retail loves digital because the stock turn is fantastic, but
with the loss of book shops there will be less space for academic
books for example,” Kohn told his London audience. “A lot of
book categories will no longer be held. There may have to be a
switch to shops having books on consignment as the only way