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Old 10-10-2014, 09:35 AM   #1
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Economist essay: From Papyrus to Pixels
The Economist has a new essay out:

From Papyrus to Pixels
The Digital Transformation has Just Begun

http://www.economist.com/news/essays...ountered-vault

I'm on a big deadline at work, and haven't had time to read it yet, but even the visual way it's presented in my browser is pretty interesting.
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Old 10-11-2014, 10:20 AM   #2
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Over at TPV, the Authors Earnings Data Guy observed:
Quote:

This graph measures dollars spent, not books purchased.

In unit sales terms, these dollar figures mean that more ebooks are being bought than (new) print books.

Mousing over the Economist chart for 2014 yields:
– $9.99 billion in print sales
– $5.69 billion in ebook sales

But keep in mind:

The average ebook purchase is $5.55 (or $7.42 if you leave out indies)
The average (new) print book purchase from BookScan’s Top-100 was $15.42

Make of that what you will
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/10/20...comment-258627

What *I* make of it is that more ebook editions are being sold than pbook and audio editions combined. A total of a billion or so, give or take...

(Just check the fine print at the Economist--they rolled Audio Book sales in with pbook sales.)

Those numbers also lead to some "interesting" comparisions for authors.
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Old 10-11-2014, 10:45 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by fjtorres View Post
What *I* make of it is that more ebook editions are being sold than pbook and audio editions combined. A total of a billion or so, give or take...

(Just check the fine print at the Economist--they rolled Audio Book sales in with pbook sales.)
Deliberately misleading. For starters, audiobooks should've been stripped out for a third category. Audiobooks are the most expensive format for books. Including them in with paper books deceitfully inflates the value of that category. Additionally, a second graph should've been created - number of titles sold. Suddenly, ebooks would've dominated

If one keeps one's head buried in the sand long enough, maybe ebooks will go away
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Old 10-11-2014, 11:26 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by tubemonkey View Post
Deliberately misleading. For starters, audiobooks should've been stripped out for a third category. Audiobooks are the most expensive format for books. Including them in with paper books deceitfully inflates the value of that category.
More, audio books are a growth category, while print is shrinking.

Even in the "reader spend" terms so beloved by the establishment, crossover is a lot closer than they make it out to be.
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Old 10-11-2014, 05:37 PM   #5
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In 2013 around 1.4m International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) were issued, according to Bowker, a research firm, up from around 8,100 in 1960. Those figures do not capture the many e-books that are being self-published without an ISBN.
I think that shows that ebooks are most certainly here to stay.
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Old 10-11-2014, 05:43 PM   #6
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Books take up space, especially when you own hundreds of them, ebooks certainly win over printed books in this respect.
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Old 10-11-2014, 05:45 PM   #7
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Just think, 4-5 years ago here (MR) there was a thread where people weere saying that ebooks had peaked at around 6 percent of total sales....
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Old 10-11-2014, 05:59 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward View Post
Just think, 4-5 years ago here (MR) there was a thread where people weere saying that ebooks had peaked at around 6 percent of total sales....
There are still knowledgeable people on record that they will peak at 30%...
Which now seems unlikely, given those economist numbers, which work out to 36% of gross revenues and 54-60% of unit sales. (And that is including audio books on the print side.)

One thing to bear in mind is that the biggest growth in ebooks is on the cheaper, Indie, side while the print side is looking to transition MMPB sales to more expensive trade paperbacks so as long as the media and pundits focus on reader spend they'll be able to make ebook penetration look slower than it is.
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Old 10-11-2014, 07:07 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by fjtorres View Post
There are still knowledgeable people on record that they will peak at 30%...
Which now seems unlikely, given those economist numbers, which work out to 36% of gross revenues and 54-60% of unit sales. (And that is including audio books on the print side.)

One thing to bear in mind is that the biggest growth in ebooks is on the cheaper, Indie, side while the print side is looking to transition MMPB sales to more expensive trade paperbacks so as long as the media and pundits focus on reader spend they'll be able to make ebook penetration look slower than it is.
There was a man who said that heavier than air flight was impossible. Then came the Wright Bros. and their Wright Flyer. Then the man said "ok, a one person flying machine is possible, but they'll never have a flying machine that can lift more than one person at a time (or words to that effect). So I wouldn't want to impose a limit on how great a percentage of books will go to ebook format.
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Old 10-11-2014, 07:48 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by crich70 View Post
There was a man who said that heavier than air flight was impossible. Then came the Wright Bros. and their Wright Flyer. Then the man said "ok, a one person flying machine is possible, but they'll never have a flying machine that can lift more than one person at a time (or words to that effect). So I wouldn't want to impose a limit on how great a percentage of books will go to ebook format.
Me neither.
At least not until pbooks hit the tipping point for the batch printed returnable books model in at least one genre.
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Old 10-12-2014, 07:38 AM   #11
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eBooks will eventually approach 100%. There will still be pBooks, just as there is still vinyl, but they will be relegated into the nostalgic/niche market.
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Old 10-12-2014, 10:52 AM   #12
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eBooks will eventually approach 100%. There will still be pBooks, just as there is still vinyl, but they will be relegated into the nostalgic/niche market.
And our present ebook formats will probably go the same way in time. We saw it happen with movies. First there was film stock, then the VHS cassette, then DVD and now Blu-Ray disks are slowly replacing them. And one day something will replace the Blu-Ray so I don't doubt that something will one day replace Epub and Kindle formats as well.
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Old 10-12-2014, 01:31 PM   #13
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And our present ebook formats will probably go the same way in time. We saw it happen with movies. First there was film stock, then the VHS cassette, then DVD and now Blu-Ray disks are slowly replacing them. And one day something will replace the Blu-Ray so I don't doubt that something will one day replace Epub and Kindle formats as well.
It looks more like digital download formats will replace Blu-Ray.
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